


A Little Key, a Heavy Door

by Hark_bananas



Series: Tender is the Ghost [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Art supplies, Artist Steve Rogers, Christmas, Getting to Know Yourself, Getting to know you, Halloween Costumes, M/M, Morse Code, Post-Winter Soldier, Pre-Slash, Recovery, SHIELD Headquarters, Slash if you squint, Steve Rogers is strong-armed into going to therapy, Thanksgiving, Therapy, doors, epistolary fiction if you squint, getting better, kneaded erasers, paper snowflakes, sad sack Steve Rogers, slow fic, somebody give this man a hug, the hidden rake of repressed thoughts, therapist OC - Freeform, very little action, very little angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22172047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hark_bananas/pseuds/Hark_bananas
Summary: “He’s here.”Steve leaps out of his seat before he realizes what he’s doing. “He came into the Tower lobby a week ago, on the 15th, no weapons, gave himself up. I was there,” she continues.“Where is he? Is he okay?” He’s pacing rapidly up and down in the quinjet’s back bay, and he sees Clint duck out of the cockpit and exchange a worried glance with Sam.“He’s okay. He wanted to come in. SHIELD has him now."
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Tender is the Ghost [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595953
Comments: 134
Kudos: 423





	1. September

**Author's Note:**

> So, I started writing some extremely self-indulgent domestic fluff, and about a quarter of the way through I thought, "This really needs a prequel." 40k words later, here we are!
> 
> This work is finished, and chapters will be posted every other day. The second part of this series should be finished by the end of this month (provided I don't get distracted by another WIP), so if you like this, then keep an eye out for that!
> 
> Many thanks to [Eddie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EldritchSquared) (who you can also find on [Tumblr](https://eldritchsquared.tumblr.com)) for the beta!
> 
> Title is from a Charles Dickens deep cut ("a very little key will open a very heavy door") lol.

Steve gets the call from Natasha when he and Sam and Clint are back on the quinjet, making sure that everything is ready for the return flight to New York. Clint is in the cockpit doing the pre-flight check and Sam is strapping weapons cases down in the cargo hold, but he looks up and frowns at Steve when his phone starts to vibrate, jangling the keys in his pocket. He had called Hill the second the blackout was lifted, but even though they’ve only been officially finished with the mission for five whole minutes, he’s not surprised to see Natasha’s name on the caller ID.

He shrugs at Sam and swipes to accept the call. “Hey Nat, we’re almost ready to take off, everything went well enough. The second base was almost abandoned, there were only two guards to dispatch. We got the intel, but from the looks of the place, I doubt it’s going to give you much more than what we got from the first base. And probably not much more than you already know.”

“I’m calling about something else, Steve,” she says. Her voice is calm, neutral, but that means nothing. “Are you sitting down?”

Steve’s heart rate picks up automatically . “Yeah, what is it?”

“He’s here.”

Steve leaps out of his seat before he realizes what he’s doing. “He came into the Tower lobby a week ago, on the 15th, no weapons, gave himself up. I was there,” she continues.

“Where is he? Is he okay?” He’s pacing rapidly up and down in the quinjet’s back bay, and he sees Clint duck out of the cockpit and exchange a worried glance with Sam.

“He’s okay. He wanted to come in. SHIELD has him now.”

“The _fuck_ they do,” he blurts out. “Nat. Nat! How the fuck could you give him to SHIELD, you know what that means, they’re gonna…”

Natasha cuts him off sharply. “Shut up and listen to me, Steve. You know that this isn’t the SHIELD of six months ago. Fury himself came tearing down to the Tower to bring him in personally. I’ve been running back and forth all week between his office and where they’re keeping Barnes in the subbasement, and…”

Steve is clutching the phone so tightly that he can feel the plastic case creak. His other hand is in his hair, tugging it painfully into dirty spikes. “He came in voluntarily and they put him in a fucking cell, Nat, why didn’t you contact me, why couldn’t you have held them off until I got there?”

Sam is standing outside of the tight circle that Steve is circumscribing in his distress, his hands held up in a placating gesture. He starts to say, “Steve, if you could just…,” but Steve doesn’t even notice him.

Natasha’s neutral voice turns cold on the line, and it’s enough to break Steve out of his hysterical feedback loop. “Rogers. All of this happened a week ago and you were on comms blackout. There was nothing I could do, and in light of what I know now, I wouldn’t have done anything else. This is a good thing. This is what he wants. If you want to help Barnes, I strongly suggest that you stop thinking about what you want and start thinking about what he needs.”

Natasha’s never used that voice on him before. He feels chilled to the bone.

Her voice changes again, back to her normal dry tone. But this time, he thinks he can detect something else, something softer. Compassion? “Look, I’ll be at the Tower when you get back to fill you in. You’ve got a three-hour flight ahead of you, so in the meantime, I suggest you either get some rest or talk to Sam about it.” She hangs up, and Steve is left holding the phone up to his ear, listening to the empty silence, not even a dial tone to comfort him.

* * *

Once in New York, Steve bypasses the Tower and goes straight to SHIELD headquarters. He must look like thunder because they wave him right through security, and after a tense five seconds waiting for the elevator, he slams through the fire doors and takes the stairs two at a time up to Fury’s office on the tenth floor.

He breezes right past Fury’s secretary, who must have been warned of his arrival because he doesn’t protest. Steve doesn’t knock before he shoves the door open and stops short in front of Fury, sitting behind his desk, and Natasha, leaning on the front edge and facing the door.

Natasha gives him a wry smile. “I knew you weren’t going to stop to meet me at the Tower first.”

Steve clenches his fists. “Where is he?”

Fury cocks an eyebrow and Natasha purses her lips. “Steve…”

“Don’t you _Steve_ me,” he snarls. Natasha’s eyebrows climb up her forehead, a sign, Steve knows, that he’s really stepped in shit. He immediately feels chagrined, the crowbar of his anger cracking a little against her vibranium facade.

He forces himself to unclench his hands, straightening out his fingers, which ache for a second at the release of pressure. He closes his eyes and tries to push his anger aside. “Sorry Nat. Jesus. Sorry.” He scrubs both hands over his face. “I just…” he feels a telltale lump in his throat, like a paste of tears and anger and bile all mashed together, and swallows hard to push it back down.

“I know this is really hard for you,” Natasha says, her voice neutral again, but with a hint of softness, and Steve knows he’s being granted a kindness by being allowed to see it. “But please listen to us before you go off halfcocked and we have to shoot you with an elephant tranquilizer.”

Fury snorts, and if Steve doesn’t actually glare at him, at least he narrows his eyes.

"Anyway," Natasha continues, “last Monday I was at the Tower in the training gym with Tony and Bruce when JARVIS told us that Barnes had entered the lobby and was standing in front of the elevator bank. We all got downstairs as quick as we could, Tony from outside with his suit on and Bruce and I through the private entrance to the stairs in case he thought we were coming by elevator and was waiting for his shot. Not that it would have given us much of an advantage.”

Steve clenches his fists again as she shrugs, but then she holds up a placating hand.

“Just listen before you blow up again.” She waits until he nods to continue. “The moment he heard us coming, he put his hands behind his head and knelt down on the floor.” She turns to Fury. “Actually, since we have it all on camera, can you put the footage up on the TV?”

Fury taps a few things on his keyboard and the flatscreen TV on the right-hand wall lights up with a grainy image of Bucky kneeling on the floor, head bowed, fingers interlaced over the nape of his neck. Steve takes a step forward automatically before catching himself.

Fury presses a key, and the video jerks into motion. Nat and what looks like the entire Tower security team pour out of the stairwells, guns drawn and pointed at the man on his knees. Steve sees Tony fly in through the big glass front door and land at his back with his repulsors out. There’s a moment of stillness, and then Bucky raises his head, looks straight at Natasha, and says something.

“This is when he said, ‘I want to come in. I am tired of running.’”

Steve watches as Natasha moves around behind him, cautiously, and cuffs him with a pair of adamantium magcuffs passed to her by the security team. He can see Bucky’s lips moving, and then Natasha’s, and then he nods, and she holds him by the elbow as he struggles to his feet. They leave the Tower through the lobby doors, and Steve can see Fury standing outside in front of a fleet of black SUVs.

“What did he say? Right then?” he asks.

Natasha and Fury exchange another glance, but Natasha says, “He asked me, ‘Where is Steve?’ and I said, ‘He’s on a mission on comms blackout. I can’t tell you where, but he’s safe.’”

Steve’s shoulders slump. He’s so tired but so keyed up, he doesn’t know if he wants to sleep for a week or run a loop around Manhattan. What he really, really wants is to see Bucky, and he says so.

“Rogers,” Fury says, a note of regret in his voice that catches Steve by surprise. “He doesn’t want to see you.”

Natasha frowns minutely and shoots Fury a look. “His exact words were ‘Don’t let Steve see me,’ actually.”

Steve feels his stomach fall into his boots like a fistful of lead. “What? Why?”

“I have my guesses,” Natasha says, looking him straight in the eye. There’s something in her expression that he can’t interpret. “But I think that’s something you should talk to his therapist about. Her name is Dr. Zaidi, she specializes in deprogramming people who’ve been brainwashed. She’s one of the best in the world. Her office is right down the hall from his room, so how about we go there, and you can meet her yourself?”

* * *

Bucky is being kept in a room in subbasement level 3 of SHIELD’s New York headquarters. Steve and Natasha take the elevator down thirteen levels, and the doors open on a bland, low-lit cream-colored hallway, more reminiscent of a hotel or a private hospital than a prison. The floor is dull marble and the walls are covered in a tasteful, muted wallpaper. Steve isn’t fooled, though. He knows that Bucky is one of, if not _the_ most dangerous man in America. This isn’t a hotel, this is a prison, and a prison that even the world’s top assassin and his Hydra training and his metal arm would find it difficult to break out of.

There are closed doors leading off of both sides of the hall, and a dogleg at the end that hides what's around the bend. Natasha stops at the last one before the corner and knocks thrice.

“Come in,” a voice calls lightly from the other side of the door.

Natasha opens the door and ushers Steve in, but doesn’t cross the threshold. “Dr. Zaidi, this is Captain Rogers.” She turns to Steve. “Steve, Dr. Zaidi. I’ll leave you to it, I’ve still got business to take care of upstairs.”

“Okay,” Steve says, but she’s already left and closed the door behind her. He turns back around to face the doctor.

“Captain Rogers,” she says with a smile, and holds out her hand for him to shake, then gestures to the worn, high-backed, overstuffed leather chair in front of her desk. He examines her subtly as he settles himself in the chair. Dr. Zaidi seems young, to Steve’s eye, with big eyes behind wire-frame glasses and a round, kind face framed by a dark blue hijab. But she’s looking at him in a way that gives Steve the impression of kindness and compassion with a core of solid steel. She has a cut-glass British accent that reminds him of Peggy, and his heart gives a tiny twinge in his chest.

“Well,” he says after a moment. “What can you tell me about B… Barnes?”

“I can’t tell you much,” she says, and Steve furrows his brows, but she continues, “Patient confidentiality, you understand. Now, if Barnes gives me permission to share some of the details of his case with you, I can certainly do so, given how close you are to the case and the unique situation.”

“I… I could just ask him myself,” Steve says hesitantly, thinking about what Natasha had said in Fury’s office.

Dr. Zaidi’s noncommittal smile twists into a sympathetic frown. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

Steve can feel the anger heating up inside him again like an iron in the fire. “I want to talk to him,” he says, and it comes out more curtly than he had intended, but he really doesn’t care.

Dr. Zaidi narrows her eyes slightly. “You may talk to him, Captain Rogers, that is fine. But you cannot see him.”

Steve frowns, confused.

“Barnes and I have already discussed this, as he very insightfully predicted that you would not be happy with zero contact. He has said that you may talk to him through the door of his room, if that’s something you would agree to.”

“And he can hear me through the door?”

“Yes, the wood is just a veneer, of course. Behind it is reinforced adamantium, but it conducts sound quite well. He might not hear you well if he’s on the other side of the room, but if he’s standing beside the door, it’ll be like you’re in the same room. Almost.” There’s something about her accent that gives her an air of authority, even on something as mundane as door construction, and Steve feels himself wanting to trust her like he’d trusted Peggy from the very first. He nods.

The doctor looks him steadily in the eye. “Barnes has said it’s okay for you to talk to him, but he doesn’t want you to see him, and he won’t talk to you. The door is locked, it’s not like you could get in without making quite a lot of noise, so please don’t even try.”

She must see the turmoil that’s roiling inside of Steve, it must be written plain as day on his face, the hurt and the anger and the anguish and the fear, because she goes on, “Please, Captain Rogers, I want to stress how very important it is that you respect his wishes. He is having to adjust to many things right now, and recovery is long and slow. The deprogramming that he started himself when he broke from Hydra is an ongoing process and a very, very difficult one. You may talk to him, but don’t try to force him to answer. What he needs is for you to simply be there, with as much circumspection and as few expectations as possible.”

Steve closes his eyes and scrubs his hands over his face. He feels almost too tired to cry, but the impulse is there, behind his eyelids and in the back of his throat.

“I understand.”

He doesn’t, not at all, but he doesn’t have to understand why this is what Bucky needs in order to do it. There has never been a time when Bucky needed something and Steve refused to provide it, and he won’t start now. “Has he said anything about his… past? Our past? Can I talk about when we were kids, or should I stick to the present day?”

Dr. Zaidi’s smile is like a little ray of sunshine. “That’s a very good question, Captain Rogers, and that’s exactly the kind of circumspection I am talking about. I will ask him, or you could ask him to tell me what he wants, and then I can pass it on to you.”

Steve must look crestfallen, because her smile grows warmhearted. “I know it may hurt that he doesn’t want to talk to you. I know enough of the history that you share to know that you must have been hoping for a far different kind of reunion.” Steve can’t meet her eye anymore; he stares down at the colorless tufted wool rug between his boots and nods. “But you have to remember that you were his last mission, a mission he never actually completed. The trigger words and other activation keys that were implanted by Hydra are still there. You must understand that he believes that he needs to do this in order to keep himself from hurting _you_.” She emphasizes the last word with a tilt of her head.

Steve can feel his eyes prickling and he grits his teeth and rubs the toes of his dusty boots together.

“And one last thing. He has asked that we call him Barnes, plain and simple, not Sergeant Barnes, not Bucky, not James. I suggest that you do the same thing until he indicates otherwise. It’s simple respect for the name he’s chosen for himself in this moment.” Steve nods.

Dr. Zaidi stands up and says, softly, “If you’ll follow me, I will take you to his room. It’s right around the corner.”

* * *

She guides him down the corridor to Barnes’s door. “Here you are, Captain Rogers,” she says, smiling at him gently. “Room 305. I’m sorry I didn’t think to have a chair brought down here, but I’ll look into getting you one for the next time you’re here.” She points back down the hall. “I’ll be in my office if you need anything. Please stop by on the way out, if you don’t mind.” She turns around and walks back the way they came.

Steve waits until she’s turned the corner before he raps on the door, three times. _Knock knock knock._ He waits. A minute passes, then two minutes. Then he hears the sound of rustling fabric, and the almost-imperceptible footsteps of someone padding lightly toward the door. Then comes one knock, a pause, and three short knocks, echoing his own.

He almost crows with delight, but settles for a face-splitting grin that he knows Barnes can’t see. He knows that Dr. Zaidi said not to talk about the past, and he’s not going to, but he couldn’t resist trying the private Morse code signal that they had used as kids when they snuck into each other’s houses at night. Climb up the fire escape, rap on the window. _Knock knock knock_ , an S for Steve, and _knock_ pause _knock knock knock_ , a B for… for Barnes.

“Hey B… Barnes, it’s me, Steve” he says, softly. “I hope you’re doing okay.” There’s no answer from the other side of the door, just the sense of another presence, waiting. But that’s what he should have been expecting, he supposes.

“I met Dr. Zaidi, I’m sure you heard us talking out here. She’s really nice. I like her. She says she’s your therapist, and uh, a deprogramming specialist, and I think it’s great that you’ve got people like that to help you.”

He feels weird standing in an empty hallway and talking to a door. Kind of feels like writing a letter, in a way, except that in a letter it’s easy to make everything sparkle and flow because the other person can’t hear the stilted pauses, the ones that stand out starkly when you have to make awkward small talk with a door.

“I… I’m not too happy that you’re in SHIELD custody. Or, I mean, I wasn’t. But I talked to Nat, the Widow, you know, and to Dr. Zaidi, and now I see that it’s what you wanted. Maybe what you need. I trust them, and even if I don’t trust anyone else in this organization, I guess that’s enough.” 

He sways a little, dead on his feet. “Sam, you’ve met him but maybe you don’t remember, he’s always trying to get me to go to a therapist.”

 _Jesus, Steve_ , he thinks. _Way to bring up something sure to be traumatic, like Sam, the guy he kicked off the helicarrier._ He takes a deep breath. _Okay, try again._

“Barnes, I’m going to sit down next to the door, I’ve had kind of a hard day and my legs are tired.” He slides down and sits with his head resting at the corner where the door meets the frame, his legs stretched out along the baseboard.

“I’m still in uniform, actually. I just got back an hour ago from a mission where I had to be incommunicado for a week. Me, Sam, and Clint. Clint’s another friend of mine, he does stuff with arrows. Nat called me when we were getting ready to come back, and I came down here as soon as we landed. But, yeah. No comms for a week, that’s why I wasn’t here sooner. I would have been here sooner, had I known.”

He looks at his hands, grime ingrained in the lines on his palms. It’s not even proper dirt, just crud and gun oil and sweat that won’t wash off until he scrubs his hands pink under hot water. “I haven’t even had a shower yet.” He laughs softly. “I probably stink.”

He hasn’t heard any more movement from inside the room, but now there’s the sound of fabric on wood, of Barnes sliding down to sit on the floor, too. His head must be right where Steve’s is, on the other side of the door. It feels, for a moment, unbearably intimate for their first non-combat contact in seventy years. Steve closes his eyes and steadies himself.

“It’s September, which of course means that in New York, it’s the muggy ass-end of summer. You’re lucky to have air conditioning here. I live in Brooklyn now, I bought a house in Flatbush at the beginning of the summer. Maybe you know that. I don’t know if you’ve been keeping tabs on me or not. If you have, that’s okay, it doesn’t bother me. Anyway, my house doesn’t have air conditioning. I keep meaning to buy a unit for my bedroom, at least, but I just never get around to it.”

He thinks about when Sam came to stay with him in August and complained bitterly for the whole two-week visit about the unbearable heat. It didn’t really bother Steve that much; he figures that after so much time in the ice, he could live on the face of the sun and not get tired of it. _But maybe if there’s ever… if there was a possibility that he… that one day…_ He nips that thought in the bud almost as soon as it surfaces, files it away, half-formed, in the dark, untrod recesses of his mind. No point in driving himself crazy with maybes.

“I bought the house in Flatbush without really thinking about it, just knew that I needed a place away from Manhattan and the Tower and work, but now that I’ve lived there for three months, I really love it. It’s a row house, two floors and two bedrooms. Well, technically three bedrooms, but one of them is basically a walk-in closet, so I use it as a studio.”

He pauses again. On the other side of the door he can hear steady breathing, and, once he really focuses, a heartbeat.

“Not that I do much painting. I just really haven’t felt the inspiration, lately. Haven’t finished anything since I bought the house, actually. But the studio has a skylight and a window facing east, so I get great light almost all day long. It’s the perfect place to paint as soon as I feel like painting again.”

What else to say? He’s never had practice making small talk like this without a responsive audience. He goes back to the letter idea, thinks about what he’d put in it if he was writing one.

“Oh! The house also has a backyard, and a pretty big one, too, by Brooklyn standards. I paid out the nose for the privilege, though. Jesus christ, you have no idea how much real estate in New York costs these days. Or maybe you do, I dunno. I thought I was gonna have a heart attack when Nat told me. But apparently I’m also rich because of my army back pay and the interest on the money I’d saved before I ended up in the ice.”

 _Oh shit_ , he thinks. _Shit. I can’t talk about this._

The breathing on the other side of the door is steady, but Barnes’s heart is beating a little faster.

_Okay. Regroup. New strategy._

“Anyway, the neighborhood is great. Lots of families, lots of great food from all over the world. Clint says I’m a gentrifier, which I guess is a new word that means a rich white guy who moves into a working class neighborhood. It’s kind of an insult, actually, and it should be, because gentrifiers are pushing people out of their own neighborhoods where they’ve lived forever. But I don’t know if the shoe fits or not. I mean, I’m a rich white guy, but I was also working-class poor in Brooklyn way back when.” He huffs out a laugh.

“The thing I like most about the neighborhood is that everybody recognizes me, I can see it on their faces, but they don’t give a shit. Like, the guys who sit on the bench in front of the bodega in the evening call me Cap, sometimes, but they never ask for autographs or wanna take selfies. They never even congratulate me when I make the news for doing something good. If I had known it was gonna be like that, I’d have moved back to Brooklyn as soon as…”

He stops. How can he talk about his life without talking about the _before_ and the _after_? Maybe Dr. Zaidi will know. If he’s being really, painfully honest with himself, he thinks that maybe Steve Rogers is nothing but a lever poised on the fulcrum of him putting the plane down in the ice. A simple machine, teetering endlessly between the past and the future.

There’s Avengers stuff, of course, when there’s enough of it to occupy his mind. And he’s friends with Sam, mostly friends with Clint, probably friends with Nat. But really, he hasn’t done very well at living in the future. Maybe Dr. Zaidi will know about that, too.

“Well, Barnes, it’s getting pretty late and I’ve been on my feet since before the sun came up. I don’t know what kind of hours Dr. Zaidi keeps, but she’ll probably want to be getting home by now. I’ll be back tomorrow, okay? I’ll sleep in Brooklyn tonight, but tomorrow morning I have a debriefing at the Tower and then I’ll come by to talk to you again, if that’s okay.”

He stands up with a groan, joints creaking like his years have finally caught up to him. “Goodbye Barnes, have a good night’s sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

* * *

He pops his head in Dr. Zaidi’s office on the way out. She looks up from her computer and asks, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, he didn’t talk, like you said, but he did come sit by the door and listen to me.” He walks into the room and closes the door behind him, rubbing the back of his neck, a little abashed. “I slipped up a couple of times and mentioned things that happened in the past. Once I said something about when I was in the ice, and his heartbeat sped up. So, I guess that’s a nonstarter.”

Dr. Zaidi’s eyes widen. “You can hear his heartbeat through the door?”

Steve settles in the leather chair and then taps his ear with his index finger and shrugs. “Yeah, the serum gave me enhanced hearing. But the real problem is, I don’t really know how to talk about myself, or my life, or anything, really, without bringing the past into it. I just…” he pauses, cracking all the knuckles on his left hand, a nervous habit from childhood that could never be shaken out of him by Bucky or his mother. “Sometimes I feel like everything about me hinges on the split between before the ice, and after.”

Dr. Zaidi looks at him steadily and laces her fingers together on the desktop. “Captain Rogers, are you seeing a therapist yourself?”

He rubs the back of his neck again, actually embarrassed this time. “Well, no, and you’re not the first person to suggest that I should. My friend Sam is a counselor at the VA in DC and he’s always trying to get me to find someone to talk to. But I just… keep not doing it. But maybe, if you…” He trails off, looking up at her hopefully.

“Well.” Dr. Zaidi is giving him a look that is compassionate and understanding. “You know, I’m sure, that I cannot take you on as a client, as my speciality doesn’t exactly encompass your… issues,”– she waves a hand vaguely in the air– “not to mention the conflict of interest. Besides, I have my hands full with Barnes, and I’m not sure I want to deal with two of you at the same time.” She gives him a small smile. Steve returns the smile, but he can feel the corners of his mouth pulling down in spite of himself.

“However, I have read your file, and I can draw my own conclusions. And I do think that if you want to continue having contact with Barnes, it’s in his best interest that you begin to work through the trauma of your own past. And you do have trauma, I assure you,” she continues, when Steve opens his mouth. “What I imagine is serious trauma that has never been addressed.” He shuts his mouth with a snap and she nods. “So I am going to recommend to Director Fury that you only be allowed contact with Barnes when you are regularly seeing a therapist of your own.”

Steve jaw drops in outrage and he clenches his fists. He can feel the flare of anger rise through his chest, his lungs like the bellows that fan the forge, the iron suddenly red-hot again. “What is this, a restraining order? You can’t do that, he’s my best friend!” He struggles to keep his voice steady and not start yelling.

Dr. Zaidi is still looking at him with compassion, but the veil thins for a moment and he can see the steel core hiding behind her eyes.

“Captain Rogers, Barnes is my patient, and as a medical professional I have a duty toward him that does not include consideration of you or your feelings.” Then the steel is gone again, and she even looks a little sad. “You are Barnes’s lodestar, you must know that. He broke his programming and escaped Hydra because of you. I think that being in close contact with you while he is in recovery will be very beneficial. But you cannot make him carry your burdens as well as his own. That will only set back his progress, and I know that’s something you don’t want to risk. If you want to help him, you must begin to face your own traumas yourself.”

Steve’s shoulders slump like a deflating parachute, and to his utter shame, he begins to cry. “I’m sorry, so sorry,” he apologizes after a minute’s struggle to get himself back under control. He sniffles a little, pressing his fingers into his eye sockets until he sees stars. “It’s been a very long day.”

“I understand.” The doctor’s voice is so kind that Steve almost bursts into tears again. “Now, I imagine that you’ve already made plans to come back and talk to Barnes again soon, so I will give you a grace period. You have a week show me evidence that you’ve been looking for a therapist before I talk to Director Fury about it.”

“Can… can you recommend someone? I’ll ask Sam, too, but he lives in DC so he’s not that familiar with the New York superhero therapy scene.” He pauses for a second, rubbing his stinging eyes with his knuckles. “But it has to be someone unaffiliated with SHIELD. If you can’t take me, I won’t go to another SHIELD therapist. No offence.”

Dr. Zaidi smiles at him. “None taken. I understand that, after everything, you may be wary of us and our motives. Although I assure you that, as I said before, I take patient confidentiality _very_ seriously.” The steel is back in her eyes again. Steve nods. He believes her.

“I appreciate that you trust me to recommend someone for you, and I can have a short list of names for you the next time you’re here. And now, Captain Rogers, not as a doctor, but as a friend of a friend, I believe that you need to go home and get a good night’s sleep before you collapse here in my office.”

Steve nods again. He’s suddenly too tired to do more than wave as he stands up and takes his leave.

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, it’s me again. I hope you slept well last night. I know I did. I didn’t even take my bike home because I was afraid of falling asleep at the wheel. Thank god Tony keeps a whole fleet of cars and chauffeurs around twenty-four hours a day. I had to take a cab here this morning, though, ‘cause I woke up late and didn’t have time to wait for a car to come pick me up.”

Steve is sitting on the floor again, legs stretched out along the baseboard. Dr. Zaidi had had a chair waiting for him when he arrived, but he found he’d rather sit on the floor like yesterday. He doesn’t know if there’s a chair in Barnes’s room, or if they’d be able to get them both set up in the same position on either side of the door. This way, he knows that they’re sitting almost shoulder to shoulder, heads tilted together. It makes him think of a dark, rainy forest somewhere in Europe, the feel of scratchy pine bark through the back of his uniform coat, the solid warmth of a familiar shoulder pressed against his own. Wet and cold, huddled together and trying to keep warm. For such a miserable-sounding memory, it makes him feel awfully happy.

“I didn’t even eat dinner last night, just a protein bar I found in the bottom of my mission bag. My metabolism is insane, I have to eat every couple of hours, so after a week of terrible mission food and nothing but a protein bar for dinner, I could have eaten a whole horse this morning. If I have time, I make scrambled eggs and toast, which is one of the only things I can cook. But since I got up late, like I told you, I had to stop at the café in the Tower lobby and buy one of every breakfast sandwich they make. They’re pretty good, nothing fancy, just stuff like sausage, egg, and cheese, or bacon, avocado, and egg. Basically, they all have eggs on them.” At this moment, his stomach growls, and he bursts out laughing.

“I don’t know if you heard that, but I’m definitely hungry again. I ate five sandwiches two hours ago, but here we are, approaching lunchtime, and my stomach knows it.” He presses a hand to his stomach, hoping that it will keep quiet for just a little longer.

“I wonder what kind of food they give you in this joint. Is it good? I imagine it’s not crap, I know they have a cafeteria here for employees, so maybe you get that stuff. That’d be nice. You’d really like the café at the Tower, the girl who works behind the counter is called Sabrina, and we’re friends now ‘cause I see her all the time.”

He pauses, wondering if he should continue this line of thought. It’s not the past, but it might be a sensitive subject. _We’ll see, I guess_ , he thinks.

“She asked about you, actually. I guess she was working on the day you came in? She said that she noticed you as soon as you walked in the door because you are, and I quote, ‘stupid hot’.” He laughs again. “I don’t know what that means, but it sounds good, I think? Anyway, she told me to tell you hi, and that she’ll make you a mean mochaccino whenever you care to stop by.”

 _Ehhh, too far_ , his brain warns him. He shouldn’t talk about Barnes getting out of custody because doesn’t know when, or if, that will happen. He doesn’t even want to think about it because it makes his insides clench with fear and hope and anger and despair, and god knows what it makes Barnes feel.

“Anyway, I can’t stay for too much longer because I have to get back to the house. I was thinking about what I said about air conditioners, and I decided to go ahead and take the leap. One of the bodega guys I told you about yesterday owns an air conditioning business, actually, so I called him, and he said they’d be able to come this afternoon. I guess in September there’s not much demand for air conditioner installation ‘cause all the smart people got theirs in the spring. I’m gonna put one in my bedroom and one in the guest room. I thought about putting one in the studio, ‘cause what with the skylight and all it gets pretty miserable in there in the summer, but then half of the window would be blocked, and I don’t want that. I can sweat it out, no big deal. Maybe I can work sweat into my paintings, somehow. That sounds very modern.” He grins at himself. “Wouldn’t be out of place at the MoMa, from what I’ve seen.”

He hops to his feet, light and easy today after a good night’s sleep and five breakfast sandwiches. “Alright, Barnes, I hope you have a good afternoon and a good night’s sleep. Goodbye, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

* * *

He passes Dr. Zaidi’s office on the way out and she calls, “Captain Rogers? Can you step in a moment?”

She’s standing in front of her desk, holding a piece of paper torn from a notebook.

“I’ve made you a list of three colleagues of mine that could take you on as a patient. I’ve already spoken to all of them, and they all have openings in their schedules and are willing to work with your special situation.” She waves a hand at him and he knows that she’s talking about Captain America.

“I have known all of them for many years, and I highly recommend each and every one of them. Of course, you will have to decide for yourself which of them is the best fit for you, or perhaps that none of them are, but they have all worked with veterans before and they all specialize in PTSD. I encourage you to give each of them a call, set up an appointment, and then choose the one that you have the best rapport with.”

He takes the paper and she gives him a broad smile. “And none of them are affiliated with SHIELD. In fact,” and here she laughs a little, “all three were somewhat disapproving when I accepted this position at the beginning of August.”

“You’ve only been here since August?” Steve says, huffing out a relieved breath. “Wow, that takes a load off my mind. I mean, no offense, but I’m sure you can understand why I was wary of someone who’d been with SHIELD since before Project Insight.”

“I understand perfectly, Captain Rogers. In fact, it may help you to know that, although Barnes is not my only patient, I was headhunted specifically as a contingency, in case he ever came in. Director Fury is very much invested in his recovery.”

Steve is surprised and grateful in equal measures, but a small, cynical voice whispers, _and after he recovers? How will they recoup that investment_? “That... that does help,” he says. He waves the piece of paper. “And thank you, by the way. It’s… I’m from…” He pauses, crossing his hands to start cracking his knuckles before he catches himself. “When I was growing up, nobody talked about these things. If you had problems like this, either you were weak, or not right in the head. I knew lots of kids whose dads had come home from the Great War with battle fatigue, which I guess is what we called PTSD or trauma back then, but nobody ever talked about it. You just soldiered on. I’m… I’m really happy to be living in the future, actually. The world seems like a much more open place. It’s nice that people can get the help they need.”

Dr. Zaidi gives him a look, a little bit fond and a little bit exasperated. “And it’s nice that _you_ can get the help _you_ need, Captain Rogers.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Thanks.”

* * *

Steve hasn’t missed a day since the day he came back from the mission. Every morning he gets up, runs half a dozen laps around Prospect Park, eats breakfast, runs errands if they can’t be put off until later, and takes the bike to Manhattan. If he has an early meeting at the Tower, he goes into SHIELD headquarters afterwards; otherwise, it’s the first thing he does.

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, sorry I’m a little late today, but there was something nasty and magical crawling out of the Gowanus and we had to go mop it up. Nothing major, we just had to get civilians out of the way and contain it, and now the hard part of tracking down whoever’s responsible is SHIELD’s problem.”

Steve is in his uniform again, shifting around on the floor, trying to find a comfortable position where his uniform top doesn’t ride up and pinch his stomach. He could have gone home to change, they hadn’t actually been that far from his house, but everybody else had been eager to get back to the Tower to debrief, so he’d just ridden along. “Anyway, I don’t know if Dr. Zaidi has given you the all-clear to go up on the roof, but you should definitely talk to her about it. It’s a beautiful day, and we are finally, _finally_ at that point in September when the summer breaks and it starts to get cool. Not really cool, it’s probably in the seventies out there, but there’s a great breeze off the water.”

He yanks down on the uniform top with both hands. The Kevlar is excellent at keeping out things that have no business being inside of his body, but it’s nobody’s idea of comfortable loungewear. “Honestly, I don’t know if they even let you out of your room.” He tamps down the brief flash of anger that zings through his chest at the thought. He’s only known Dr. Zaidi for a week, but he trusts her. If Barnes isn’t leaving his room, it’s probably for the best.

“I guess I should ask Dr. Zaidi what you do all day. If you like to read, I can bring you some books. The future is so great, Barnes, it has more science fiction than you can possibly imagine, and it’s all so, so good.” He sits up a little straighter, tugging on the uniform again, but the discomfort fades into the background as he warms to a favorite subject.

“When I don’t have Avengers business going on, I get through five books a week, sometimes. I go to the library a lot ‘cause even if I’m flush, I’d go bankrupt paying the cover price for all the books I read. I mean, I own a lot of books too ‘cause I can’t walk past a bookstore without going in to buy something, and there are a hell of a lot of bookstores in New York. Actually, I need some new bookshelves ‘cause they’re starting to accumulate on the windowsills, and I was debating whether or not to get them at Ikea or build them myself.”

His mind wanders for a minute, thinking about the logistics of building a bookshelf. It shouldn’t be that hard, just two long boards with short boards between them, right? But he doesn’t even have any tools.

“God, Ikea, I don’t know if you know about Ikea. It’s this weird, huge Scandinavian store out in Red Hook that sells all kinds of furniture and crazy stuff. And all the furniture has weird names.”

He looks down at his hands curled in his lap. He’s not really proud of the fact that someone had to come around to his house and force him to live like a normal person. But he’s talking to Barnes; he couldn’t hide anything even if he wanted to.

“So, um, Nat dragged me there after I bought my house because she found out I’d been living there with nothing but the kitchen appliances. I was sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag, like a squatter. She was pretty mad.” He huffs a sheepish laugh at the memory of Natasha’s face when she’d seen his empty house for the first time, when he’d already been living there for two weeks.

“My apartment in DC was furnished by SHIELD, so I didn’t bring anything to New York with me but a duffel bag full of clothes and a box of books. It looks really nice, now. Nat and Clint both have been a huge help. They know how to get me out of my own head and they’re not afraid to kick my ass if I need it.”

He talks a little bit more about Ikea, how they had gently abused all of the display furniture to find pieces that wouldn’t fall apart if he leaned on them, and how Natasha had made him pick out a bag full of candy from the grocery section while she paid because he had stared to panic about spending so much money. He tells Barnes about his kitchen, the backsplash tiled in buttery yellow, about his gigantic mattress that’s just shy of perfectly rock hard, and about the jungle of houseplants that he’s slowly accumulating in all the bright corners.

Finally, he looks at the time on his phone and sighs. “I should go, I really need to get out of this uniform. It’s pinching me in all the wrong places.” He shoves himself to his feet and winces. “Alright, Barnes, I hope you have a good evening and that they give you something delicious for dinner. I’ll be back tomorrow. Goodbye.”

* * *

A few days later, he waves at Dr. Zaidi when he passes her open door on his way in, and she motions for him to stop for a moment. “Captain Rogers, if you don’t mind, pop round again when you leave. I’ve got something to discuss with you.”

“Yeah, of course,” Steve says. “Is it important? Is everything okay?”

She looks amused, strangely. “Yes, yes, everything’s fine. I’ll see you in a bit.” She dismisses him with a wave of her hand and he sees her grinning down at the papers on her desk before we walks away.

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, I hope you’re having a good morning. I brought a sketchbook with me today so that I can doodle while we’re talking. I think better if I’ve got something to do with my hands. You know, last week, I unraveled the hem of one of my favorite shirts while I was talking to you ‘cause I didn’t realize what my hands were doing until it was too late.” He laughs sheepishly. “Oops.”

“But the problem with sketching is that sometimes I forget to talk ‘cause I get lost in what I’m doing. Honestly, though, I’ve got nothing to do until after lunch and I’d be happy just to sit here and draw in silence. So, if you get bored and want me to start talking again or just go away, knock on the door, okay?”

Steve pulls his pencil case out of his backpack and rummages through it for his favorite 2H and a kneaded eraser. He flips the leather-bound sketchbook open to the first page.

“This is a brand new sketchbook, and honestly, I’m a little nervous. The first page is always the hardest to fill ‘cause it seems like such a responsibility. If I mess the first page up, I feel like I’m gonna mess up the whole book. So, I always agonize about what to put on the first page so that it sets the tone for the rest.”

He sits in silence for a minute, working the eraser between his fingers, listening to Barnes’s slow, patient breathing and the quiet _lub-dub_ of his heart on the other side of the door.

“Okay, you know what? There’s only one way not to mess this up. I know exactly what I’m gonna draw. Here goes nothing.”

He sits up a little straighter and starts to sketch the outline, but he doesn’t move his head from the doorframe, his temple pressed to the wood.

“My backyard has a greenhouse in it. Did I already tell you that? It’s got real glass, really nice. I don’t know anything about the people who owned the house before I did, except that they were an old married couple. The house was empty for a year or so before it went on the market, but you could still tell that they’d taken care of the backyard.” He twists the eraser into a point and rubs out part of the outline, then does it over again and nods in satisfaction when it comes out right.

“There’s a nice, tall wooden fence around the backyard, and some flowerbeds around the perimeter. There must have been a lot of flowers at one time, but now everything is overgrown. I feel kinda bad about that, actually. But I don’t know anything about plants, and I don’t really have time to learn.”

He goes silent for a minute, filling in some of the details in the drawing.

“I mean, I have a lot of houseplants, but they’re so easy to take care of. I just have to remember which ones get watered once a week and which get watered once a month and I’m good. Outdoor plants are trickier, I think.”

He erases a particularly stubborn line and redraws it for the third time. “One day I’ll get my act together and plant some flowers. I love flowers and I’d love to have a garden, I just don’t know where to start. So, I don’t.”

He set the sketchbook down and pulls a 2B out of his pencil case. “If I’m feeling kinda sad, sometimes I buy something from the florist to put on the dining room table. I like irises the best because they smell so good, but they’re really expensive. Usually I get sunflowers or something cheerful like that. Since I live by myself it can get kind of lonely if I don’t do things like buy flowers to cheer the house up.”

All of a sudden, he realizes what he’s been saying, and he can feel himself blush, pencil suspended over the sketchbook.

“Ah, jeez, was I just rambling about flowers?” He laughs softly at himself. “This is the dangerous thing about drawing and talking at the same time. Part of my mind is occupied, so I’m more likely to say whatever shit my subconscious cooks up.”

He doesn’t say anything for a few more minutes. The _scritch-scritch_ of his pencil does the talking for him.

“I can’t believe you came in two weeks ago already. It seems like so much longer than that. Barnes, I’m really proud of you, you know. I think you did a very good, brave thing. At first, I was really angry that SHIELD had you and were keeping you in a cell down here, but I’ve been talking to Dr. Zaidi a lot and now I can see that maybe it was the best thing to do.”

He registers, almost subconsciously, that Barnes’s heartbeat has sped up a little. He doesn’t know if it’s because Steve said he was proud of him, or that he was angry at SHIELD, or something else. Either way, that’s another line of conversation that he discards as dangerous territory.

“You know, I’m seeing a therapist now, too. The first day I was here I talked to Dr. Zaidi after I left you and she basically gave me an ultimatum. Told me I had to start seeing a therapist myself or I… I couldn’t come talk to you anymore.”

On the other side of the door, he hears the quickening heartbeat and an almost-imperceptible creaking noise, and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s the sound of Barnes grinding his teeth. _Jesus_ , Steve thinks, _is he angry_?

“She was totally right, of course,” he says quickly. “I’m not gonna be any help to you at all if I don’t have my own head in the right place. I’ve only had two sessions with Dr. Castaño, that’s my therapist, but she’s already helping me. It’s something I should have done ages ago, but I just never thought it was that important. Until now. So thanks for that. That’s all on you.”

He angles the pencil so that he can use the side to add some shading, the soft _wssh-wssh_ filling in the silence.

“I’m almost done with the preliminary part of this sketch, but I’m gonna need a reference for the details and all that stuff. And it’s almost lunchtime, so I think I’m gonna go, okay? Later I promised Clint I’d help him move some furniture out of one of the apartments in a building he apparently owns in Bed-Stuy. Who knew? Not me. That guy’s a mystery.”

Steve closes the sketchbook and zips it and the pencil case into his backpack.

“Alright, Barnes, I hope they bring you something good for lunch. Sleep well, goodbye, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

* * *

“Hi, I’m back. What did you wanna discuss?”

Dr. Zaidi smiles at him and motions toward the overstuffed leather chair. “You were quite a long time with Barnes today,” she says, eyebrows raised just enough to show that it’s a question, not a statement of fact.

“Oh, yeah,” Steve says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I brought my sketchbook. I really need to have my hands occupied with something, otherwise I end up picking my clothes apart before I realize what I’m doing.” He holds the frayed hem of his t-shirt out and grins ruefully. “But then when I’m drawing, I get too focused and forget to talk. I told Barnes to knock on the door if he was getting bored or wanted me to leave, though. He never did, so I guess it was okay.”

“I’m sure it was,” Dr. Zaidi says, reassuringly. “Now. Two things. First, I’ve been talking to Barnes about your, shall we say, conversations with him. One-sided as they are, I believe, as does he, that it is helping him quite a lot. It gives him a routine, and something not related to his recovery to look forward to, and it helps to ground him in the present. He has also made a lot of progress recovering memories in the last few weeks.”

A crease appears between her brows, and it makes her look suddenly a decade older and a century wiser. “Most of them are, unfortunately, traumatic in nature. But there are also some memories of your childhood and youth together, memories that he usually identifies as happy, or at least not distressing.” The crease disappears, replaced by a small smile.

“I think I can safely say that you may begin to talk about the past with him. But, of course, please stick to memories or topics that you are sure will be positive for him. Later, perhaps, we can begin to delve into some of the more distressing memories that you share, from the war, or hardships of your youth, but not yet.”

“Yeah, of course, I understand,” Steve says. He feels like he should be upset about the traumatic memories, but he registers it at a distance. Mostly, he’s just giddily happy.

“Now, the second thing. After you talked to him the other day about a mission in Brooklyn, he appeared somewhat agitated, and kept asking who had your six.”

Steve opens his mouth to explain, but she holds up her hand. “I know, he told me the phrase refers to the person who is designated to watch your back. Then he said, and I quote”– here she picks up a piece of paper with a handwritten note on it and clears her throat – “‘That bastard can’t take care of himself, not a fucking shred of self-preservation. And tell him I said that.’” She grins enormously and Steve can’t help but laugh out loud at Barnes’s voice translated through her prim and proper accent. “He made me write it down, actually. I don’t think he thought I’d get it right if I didn’t.”

“That’s him alright,” says Steve, grinning like his life depends on it. “Maybe I should talk to him some more about my team so that he knows I’ve got competent people around to babysit me.” They both laugh. “So, I guess this is as good a time as ever to ask. When do you think he might want to talk back? To me?”

Dr. Zaidi’s smile softens. “That’s not a question I can answer. It may be soon, it may be quite a long time from now. You should know that he’s not always so verbal. In fact, the nonverbal days outnumber the verbal ones at the moment. And even when he’s verbal, he doesn’t often say more than a few words at a time.” Here she pauses and looks amused again. “As I said, he was agitated when I saw him yesterday after you talked to him, but he wasn’t distressed. Actually, agitated may not be the best word. Perhaps I should say energetic. He talked about you quite a lot, or at least what, for him, is quite a lot, and with what I would characterize as an exasperated fondness.”

Steve can feel his smile trying to break his face in two.

“But that kind of communication on his part is unusual. However, this is all part of the process. Eventually, the verbal days will outnumber the nonverbal ones. Considering everything that’s happened to him, he has shown an astounding resilience. In fact, without the resilience he may not have survived so long.” The crease is back, but she waves her hand as if to clear the air. “But the most important thing is not to push him, and for you to focus on the good that you are doing now. I was quite serious when I said that you’ve helped him a lot, although to you it may seem like you’ve not done anything but talk to a door.”

Steve nods. He doesn’t actually feel like he’s just talking to a door, not with Barnes’s steady breathing and heartbeat keeping him company on the other side. But for some reason that feels a little too private to share.

Dr. Zaidi smiles at him again. “You’re doing a great thing, Captain Rogers. If only everyone had someone like you to watch their backs.”

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, it’s me. I can’t stay and talk today, I’m so sorry, but I’ve got a mission and I have to leave right now. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone for, but I don’t think more than a handful of days.”

He can hear the rhythm of Barnes’s breathing pick up on the other side of the door.

“In fact, I’m gonna be in trouble when I get to the Tower because I was supposed to be there five minutes ago, but I had to stop by here first. I wanted to make sure you knew why I’m not gonna be around for a few days.”

“I’m gonna tell you not to worry about me because I’ve got some of the best people in the world on my six, which you know, ‘cause I told you all about them. But I know you’re gonna worry anyway. God knows you always have. So, you know, talk to Dr. Zaidi about it if you need to. She can help.” He sighs. “But you already know that, too.”

He presses his left palm on the door, fingers spread.

“We’re gonna be on comms blackout again, so I can’t contact you. Not sure how I’d do that anyway. But just so you know, in a worst-case scenario type of situation…”– he has to stop and swallow past the lump in his throat– “Dr. Zaidi has explicit instructions to tell you if anything happens to me. You’ll never be kept in the dark, I swear.”

He rests his forehead against the door for a few more seconds, and then tries to make his voice sound as cheerful as possible. “So, you know, no news is good news. As soon as we get back, I’ll come and tell you all about it.”

He drums his fingers lightly on the door, once, twice, and then pulls his hand away and stuffs it in his pocket. “Okay, I have to go now before Tony has a conniption. I hope you have a good day, and a good couple of days until I get back. Goodbye Barnes, I’ll see you soon.”


	2. October

They get back from the mission five days later at five o’clock in the morning. Steve briefly contemplates going home, but he knows he’s not going to sleep, and he doesn't want to go all the way to Brooklyn just to change clothes and come back. He leaves the Tower and walks down to SHIELD headquarters instead. The morning shift hasn’t come in yet, so he doesn’t recognize the woman at the security checkpoint, but she apparently knows who he is and why he’s there because she barely looks up from her desk before waving him through. He makes his way down to subbasement 3. The door to Dr. Zaidi’s office is closed.

When he gets to Barnes’s room, he knocks, very quietly.

_Knock knock knock_

Immediately, the answer comes.

 _Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes,” he says. “Have you been sitting by the door this whole time?” He starts to laugh, but sobers immediately when he realizes that maybe it’s true. What if he _has_ been sitting by the door since Steve left five days ago? And it’s really early, he shouldn’t be awake yet. Has he been sleeping at all?

“Well, I’m glad to be back. The mission was pretty boring, infiltration and gathering intel, but that beats getting shot at.” He doesn't mention the knife fight.

He looks down at his hands, grubby and calloused. There's dirt under his fingernails and a long, satiny pink scar that starts at the ball of his thumb and disappears into his sleeve. It'll be gone in another twelve hours. “I’m a mess, I didn’t even go home first. Came straight here. Did not pass go, did not collect two hundred dollars. Or shower. I hope you can’t smell me through the door.”

He pauses for a minute, listening to Barnes’s measured breathing.

“So, last time I was here I didn’t get a chance to talk to you about it, but Dr. Zaidi told me that it was okay to start talking to you about the past. About things that happened when we were kids. So the whole time I was gone, I was thinking about what story I wanted to tell you first.” He’s smiling already, the memories warm and glowing like embers in his chest. “God, I have so many to choose from. I don’t have the slightest idea how much you remember from when we were kids, or even if you remember anything at all, but we did a lot of crazy shit. I made a list, actually.” Steve giggles like a child, unzipping his backpack and pulling out a small, matte black notebook. Just looking at the keywords he’d written to help jog each memory makes him laugh all over again.

“Ok, here we go. So one winter, I guess it must have been 1926 or thereabouts, there was a freak blizzard in January or February. Huge. I mean, like a shitload of snow. Maybe five feet? Only the old folks remembered it ever having snowed so much, or at least that’s what they said. Maybe they were making it up. You know how old people are.” He snickers to himself. “I guess I’m impugning our own honor here, considering we’re almost a century old ourselves.”

“Anyway, they plowed the main streets in our neighborhood but left it on the side streets because it was just too deep to handle. Or maybe there wasn’t enough manpower.” He thinks for a moment. “Or maybe they came back later and plowed the side streets, otherwise it would have taken ages to melt. I dunno, I mostly remember this one particular day I’m telling you about now.”

“So, it was a paradise for us kids. The plows turned the sidewalks into huge, towering mountains of snow with a nice, flat stretch in between. Because the plows weren’t that great, or maybe the cobblestones were just too bumpy, they always left a crust of snow on the road that turned into this wicked, frictionless sheet of ice once it got packed down a little. So the day after the blizzard, you and I got the bright idea to take your ma’s good serving platter and go sledding. We were bundled up so much that we waddled like penguins, but at least it kept us from breaking any bones.”

He’s talking with his hands, really getting into the story, now. It’s great to be able to tell these things to someone he knows will appreciate it, not like the other Avengers, who tend to roll their eyes and scoff when he talks about the old days.

“So we found the biggest, meanest snow mountain, climbed up to the top, and sat down on the serving platter. Actually, I guess you sat down and I sat on your lap because we definitely wouldn’t have both fit even if I was skinny as hell.”

“So there we were. You dug your feet in to get a good start and kicked off and immediately it felt like we were going a thousand miles an hour, flying down the hill and up the lane between the snow mountains. I still remember the feeling like it was yesterday. We were both screaming our lungs out. It was amazing until we got close to the end of the street and all of a sudden, around the corner, there came this mounted fucking policeman and there was no way in hell we were gonna be able to stop, we were going to crash right into the horse and probably die or, even worse, get arrested.”

Steve’s grinning like a loon, but he feels a little thrill of terror just thinking about it. Even so many years later, something like ninety or nineteen, depending on how you count it, he’s still not over the fright.

“They don’t call me a tactical genius for nothing, though. You were screaming bloody murder behind me, but I steered us right between the horse’s legs and then hit your knee hard so you would lean with me and we could take the corner sharp. Another kid on our street, Georgie Shea, told me later that he’d seen the whole thing and that the horse reared up on its hind legs and the policeman went ass over teakettle onto the ice.”

By now he’s having to wipe the tears out of his eyes, he’s laughing so hard.

“We wiped out against a tree, you went one direction, I went the other, and the platter went god knows where. You scrambled up and grabbed my hand and screamed ‘RUN!!’ and we high-tailed it out of there. I couldn’t run more than half a block before I started wheezing, though, so you made me scramble through a lot of fences and then hide behind some dumpsters in an alley for a while before we could get back to our street.”

“You made me go home first so that your ma wouldn’t whip us both when you told her you’d lost the serving platter. She didn’t even know you’d taken it. I’d lost both of my mittens and I was wheezing horribly, though, so I got in trouble, too.”

He sighs happily and leans his head up against the door again. All of a sudden, he notices that Barnes’s breathing has changed. It’s very deep and slow, and his heartbeat has settled into a lazy rhythm. “Barnes?” Steve whispers, very very softly. There’s no change. _Holy shit, he’s asleep_ , Steve thinks.

He sits for a moment and listens to the soft sounds coming from the other side of the door, then rummages in his bag and pulls out his pencils and sketchbook.

* * *

At eight-thirty he’s still sitting by the door, reading _Cloud Atlas_ , which he’d had in his pack. He hears footsteps coming lightly down the hall, and Dr. Zaidi turns the corner. She stops short when she sees him.

He puts his hands together and slips them under his cheek, then mouths _he’s asleep_. She nods in understanding and then points to herself and back toward her office. Steve gives her a thumbs-up and she leaves.

* * *

At nine o’clock, he hears movement on the other side of the door. A rustle, a shift, a small sigh.

“Mornin’ Barnes, are you awake?

 _Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

Steve feels happiness well up inside of him. Such a strange situation to be happy in, such a strange thing to be happy about. But here they are.

_Knock knock knock_

“Well, I don’t know how much of my amazing story about sledding under a police horse you heard. But it clearly wasn’t as funny as I thought it was.” He snickers to himself.

“I should probably go. Like I said before, I haven’t even been home yet and I’m feeling pretty disgusting inside these three-day-old clothes. I wanted to wait until you woke up, though.”

He puts his palm on the door again. He doesn’t know why, but it feels like the right thing to do. He wonders if Barnes can tell, maybe puts his palm on the other side.

“Anyway, I’m gonna go check in with Dr. Zaidi and then I’m off. I hope you have a good day and a good night’s sleep tonight, which you are clearly in need of." He heaves himself to his feet, wincing and rubbing the ache out of the small of his back. "Goodbye, Barnes, see you tomorrow.”

He walks down the hallway, around the corner, and into Dr. Zaidi’s office, where sits down in the chair in front of her desk with a groan and a sigh. “I’ve been sitting on that cold, hard floor since five-thirty, I feel like I just got out of the ice again.”

She smiles at him and says, “It was very good of you to come by so early. I suppose you got back last night?”

“Five o’clock this morning. I knew I wasn’t going to sleep, so I came here instead of going back to Brooklyn.” He waits for a moment, pursing his lips. “He was already sitting by the door when I arrived. Has he been sitting there the whole time I was gone?”

Dr. Zaidi shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so. Well, yesterday morning when I came in, I saw that he was sleeping propped up against the door, so I woke him up and at least got him back into his own bed. We had a terrible time getting him to sleep in the bed when he first came in, you know. We got him a harder mattress, a flatter pillow, different bedclothes, everything we could think of, but he still insisted on sleeping on the floor or huddled in the corner.” She looks up at the ceiling and shakes her head. “After a couple of weeks, I got him to realize that if he slept in a proper bed, he’d feel a lot better, physically. Now he sleeps in the bed every night, so when I saw him by the door yesterday, I was afraid that something had happened. But I can see now that he was just waiting for you.”

Steve is about to speak, but she holds up her hand. “Wait a moment. Now that I know he’s awake, I’ll call and get them to send his breakfast down.”

Steve sits with his head tipped back in the chair while she’s on the phone. He thinks about Barnes sleeping next to the door, waiting for him to come back. How could Dr. Zaidi have known that he wasn’t in bed?

As soon as she hangs up, he asks. “How did you know he was sleeping by the door? Do you have cameras in his room?”

He doesn’t want to come across as angry, but he knows that that’s what he sounds like anyway. Because he is, and the one thing Steve Rogers has never been able to hide is his self-righteous anger.

Dr. Zaidi gives him a flat look. “Yes, Captain Rogers, of course we do. This is not an hotel.”

He narrows his eyes at her across the desk, but her expression doesn’t change. She laces her fingers together in front of her. “You have to realize, it was either that or put him in a room with a one-way mirror where he would have had even _less_ privacy. Every person who walked down the hallway would have been able to stop and stare like he was a wolf in a cage.”

A little bit of uncharacteristic anger has crept into her voice, but when Steve’s eyes widen, she shakes her head minutely and continues. “I had to go toe-to-toe with some people in the upper echelons to get that _concession._ ” She bites the last word out.

 _Wow_ , thinks Steve. _She’s furious about this._

But just as suddenly as it appeared, her anger has dissipated. For the first time in the few weeks that he’s known her, he wonders how well she knows Natasha. There’s something about Dr. Zaidi that reminds him of the Black Widow.

“Only Director Fury and I have access to the feed. That was one of my other demands when they asked me to work with Barnes. I’m the best in the world at what I do, you know,” she says, without a trace of pride. “So I was able to make demands that another person couldn’t have gotten away with.”

Steve feels a sudden wave of overwhelming gratitude for her.

“I don’t believe that Director Fury has ever used the security feed. I check it once a day, every morning when I arrive, just to make sure that nothing untoward has happened during the night and that Barnes is safe to approach.” Steve must look thunderous again because she holds up a hand before continuing. “You have to understand, Captain Rogers, that when he came in, we had no idea how he was going to react. How much of his Hydra programming had he broken? Would he try to escape? Was his turning himself in a ruse to hit SHIELD from the inside? Even if he had successfully broken his programming and was not a danger to others, there was no telling if he was going to be a danger to himself, especially once his memories of his time with Hydra started resurfacing.”

“You mean you had him on suicide watch?” Steve chokes out.

She gives him a small, rueful smile. “Yes. Something like that. At first, there was even a camera in his bathroom, but I authorized its removal after the first week. Now there’s only one camera that covers the bedroom-slash-living area. I would love to be able to take that one away, too, but I can only do that when I’m absolutely sure that nothing bad will happen once it is gone. You also have to remember that he hasn't even been here a month, yet. Progress takes time, Captain Rogers.”

“I understand.” He shifts around in his seat nervously. He’s been thinking about asking her for something, but he’s not sure how the request will be received. This is as good a time as any, though.

“Dr. Zaidi, I’ve got a favor to ask.”

“I won’t give you access to the security footage,” she says sternly.

Steve shakes his head quickly, aghast. “No, no, I wouldn’t dream of asking for that. Jesus. It’s nothing like that.” But then he pauses and thinks about what he’s about to say. He looks up at her through the ragged fringe of hair that falls over his forehead. “Well, maybe it’s a little like that. Do… do you think I could have a picture of him? I’ve been working on a portrait of him, from before.” He doesn’t specify what he means by _before_ ; he knows that she knows. “But I’d really like to draw another one of him now. I mean, what he looks like now, and it’s impossible to find a good shot of his face from the news files. And I saw him up close while we were fighting, but I wasn’t really paying attention to his face.” He huffs out a laugh, feeling sheepish and embarrassed. _Please don’t blush, please don’t blush_ , he thinks.

Dr. Zaidi looks thoughtful. “I don’t know, that’s a good question. We have, of course, the photographs that were taken the day he came in, but those are classified. I don’t imagine you’d want one of those, anyway. He wasn’t at his best.”

She taps her chin and looks off in the distance. “I understand why you want a picture, and, actually, I think it’s a good sign. I imagine you remember your friend Bucky well enough to draw him from memory, correct?” Steve nods. “So, you acknowledge that even though Barnes has the same face, it’s a different man that is looking out through his eyes, and you can’t use one as a reference for the other.”

Steve feels choked up all of a sudden. Everything she’s saying is true, but he hasn’t really thought it through, yet. He’s been avoiding thinking it through, even though Dr. Castaño has hinted at it during his therapy sessions.

Dr. Zaidi continues, “I don’t think it would be a bad idea for me to ask him. I’ll tell him that you’re the one who wants a photo and see if he’ll agree to sit for one. I’ll let you know.”

Steve feels a rush of relief. “Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. But, if you don’t mind, please don’t tell him what it’s for. I kinda want it to be a surprise. Can you just say that I want a picture and that’s all?”

Dr. Zaidi’s smile takes over her whole face. “I think I can do that, Captain Rogers.”

* * *

Two days later, he walks by Dr. Zaidi’s office on his way out, and she comes hurrying around the desk with a plain manila envelope in her hand. “I asked Barnes about the photo, and he agreed to sit for a portrait.”

Steve takes the envelope, but he doesn’t open it. He’s kind of afraid of opening it, actually, and he’s rather be out from under Dr. Zaidi’s observant eye when he does it.

“I had initially thought about using a SHIELD photographer, but then I would have had to go through official channels, and I thought you might prefer to keep your request between the three of us.” Steve nods vigorously. “I used the camera on my own phone, it’s quite a good one, and printed it off myself in the photography lab.”

Steve clutches the envelope to his chest. “Thank you so much, Dr. Zaidi. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate the discretion.”

Dr. Zaidi smiles warmly at him. “It was no problem, Captain Rogers. I was happy to do it, as was he. I hope it’s what you need.”

She doesn’t put any special emphasis on the word _need_ , but Steve knows that she knows that he may have needed it in more ways than one.

He actually waits until he gets all the way home before he takes the envelope out of his backpack. He tips it over and a 6” x 8” photograph falls out into his hand. Looking at it, Steve recognizes the door of Dr. Zaidi’s office in the background, closed. Barnes is sitting in the leather chair in front of her desk that Steve sits in when he visits.

Barnes is…

 _Fuck_.

Steve realizes that his hands are shaking. He’s still standing in the entryway with his shoes on, so he forces himself to tear his eyes away from the photo and toe his shoes off before going to sit down on the couch. He looks at the photo again. The shot was taken head-on, Barnes’s face turned only a degree or two to the right, and Steve has the sudden wild, irrational thought that Barnes is looking straight through the photograph and can see Steve sitting in his living room with god knows what expression on his face. He shivers deliciously.

He is... He’s _beautiful_. The word resounds in Steve’s mind like the crash of a gong. In the picture, his hair is loose and messy, mostly tucked behind his ears but with a few stray locks hanging in dark sine waves around his face. The basic structure of his face is the same as Steve remembers it, the shape of his features intimately familiar: the blue-grey eyes like pebbles on a shingle beach and the dark brows spread over them like a tern’s wings, the startlingly delicate curve of his shell-pink lips, the strong, sharp jaw, hidden under a day’s worth of stubble.

He looks older, more lines around his eyes and absolutely no trace of the baby fat that still softened his face into his mid-twenties. _But he still looks like my Bucky_ , Steve thinks.

However, even the oh-so-familiar features can’t hide the fact that the face that Steve knows as well as his own no longer belongs to Bucky. It’s a different person’s face, now, and Steve doesn’t know whose. Does it belong to the Winter Soldier? To Barnes? His head is tipped back slightly, and he’s regarding the camera with a mixture of defiance and apprehension and hope, like he knows exactly what Steve is going to see but is not sure how he will take it.

 _He’s not my Bucky anymore_.

He feels, surprisingly, okay about it. _Well, we’ll just have to get to know each other again_ , he thinks. And then, a little wildly, _his mouth still curves up in each corner, thank fuck_. Steve feels a knot of tears form in his throat, and he turns Barnes’s picture face-down on the coffee table before he allows himself to break down.

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, good morning, I hope you had a good night’s sleep.”

“I… hmm. Dr. Zaidi gave me the picture she took of you. You look… you look great. I’m not just saying that, I really mean you look really great. You never had long hair when we were younger, it just wasn’t the done thing back then, but I’m really glad you kept it. I think it looks great on you.”

Steve can feel himself blushing. _Jesus christ, man, pull it together._ He clears his throat.

“Anyway. Uh, you wanna know what I’m drawing today? It’s a picture of your little sister Becca. I have some old photos at home that the Smithsonian gave back to me because they were too unimportant to put in that stupid Captain America exhibit, and I was looking through them again yesterday, and I found this one of Becca that I love so much. She’s sitting on the front stoop of your old house playing with her dolls.”

He doesn’t mention that a teenaged Barnes is also in the picture, holding a doll’s teacup up to his lips with his pinky stuck out, his eyebrows arched and a challenge in his look. He props the photo against his knees and starts to block out the poses.

“Her dolls are looking pretty rough. I don’t know if they were hand-me-downs from a neighbor or if she was just really terrible to her toys, but one of them has its hair cut short so it looks like a scrub brush and the other one is missing both of its eyes. I always thought that one was scary as shit, but she loved it. I think its name was Rosie.”

He laughs softly at the memory.

“You know it was just me and my ma when I was growing up. You and Becca were the closest I had to siblings. I guess the last time I saw her was right before I left for the army, and she was, I think, fifteen? Still looked like a little kid, even though I only had maybe half an inch on her. I took her out for ice cream, but it wasn’t much fun because she was really mad at me for joining up. She said that since you’d already gone, I was the only brother she had left.”

He stops talking for a while, letting the _scritch-scratch_ of his pencil overspread the silence.

“Of course, because I was a little shit, I got mad and gave her this big speech about the price of freedom and how I needed to do my duty for the country like you were, and all that bullshit. She threw her ice cream cone in the garbage can and stomped off in a huff.”

He laughs, a little sadly, a little fondly.

“Christ, I feel embarrassed all over again just thinking about it. Anyway, I guess she forgave me pretty quick because she wrote me just as many letters as she ever wrote to you.”

He fills in the details of Becca’s face: the curly brown hair that hid her ears, the wide blue eyes and tern’s-wing brows that pegged her and Barnes as siblings. Time passes and he realizes, with a start, that he hasn’t said anything for ages. How long has he been lost in the zone?

“Sorry, Barnes, I forgot how to draw and talk at the same time. It’s like reading, you know. Sometimes if I’m drawing at home and nothing disturbs me, I’ll finish a picture and look up and all of a sudden, it’s nine o’clock at night and I feel sick to my stomach ‘cause I missed dinner.”

The thought of food makes his stomach rumble quietly. “Not that I can’t take care of myself, don't worry, I do that plenty well.”

There a soft, almost undetectable huff from the other side of the door. _Did he just laugh at me?_ Steve thinks, incredulous and delighted.

“I do! I am very good at being a real adult living in the future. I’ll have you know I’ve got a drawer in my kitchen with menus from at least twenty-five takeout places in Flatbush. Not just pizza, either. Cuban, Thai, Bangladeshi, Ethiopian, everything.”

His stomach rumbles again, but much louder. “Ooookay, I think that’s my cue. I can’t talk about food between meals without my stomach freaking out, so I guess I’m gonna go home then and read my twenty-five takeout menus, alright? Well, I hope you have a good rest of your day and a good night’s sleep. Goodbye, Barnes, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Good morning, Barnes, hope you slept well. I’m in Manhattan a little earlier than usual today ‘cause I’ve got some really weird shopping to do that I gotta get done before I go to the Tower for training.”

He takes a slurp of the coffee he’d picked up at Starbucks on the way in.

“Okay, so it’s the middle of October, and Halloween is coming up, and Halloween here in the future is a huge deal. I don’t really know why. Everyone and their grandmother gets dressed up, and if you’re young enough to pass for a teenager, you can get away with trick-or-treating, but old people like us generally go to parties and get drunk and eat candy by the handful.”

“I don’t usually like parties, but the ones that Tony throws are pretty fun, mostly because of the mead. So, you know, I can’t get drunk because of my fucked-up metabolism, right? Well, Thor always brings this Asgardian mead to parties that actually works on me, so I can take the edge off, and that makes them bearable.” He tips his head back and downs the rest of his coffee in one scalding gulp.

“Anyway, Tony decided this year that we we’re gonna do something he calls 'Secret Skeleton,' which is apparently based off of something that people do at Christmas called 'Secret Santa'? Doesn’t make a lot of sense, I thought Santa Claus was a big secret anyway, and only kids believed in him. But I didn’t want to ask ‘cause then everybody would want to _explain_ it to me rather than just fucking _tell_ me what it's about.”

He frowns at his empty cup, then slides the cardboard sleeve off and spreads it out on his thigh, flattening the corrugation with his fingers. “So the gist of it is that Tony has his suit helmet with all the names of the Avengers and Avengers-adjacent people like Maria Hill and Thor’s girlfriend Jane in it, and we each have to draw one. And then we have to pick a costume for that person to wear, and buy all of the components, like hats or shoes or anything they’re not gonna have lying around the house.”

“And because all of the people I work with are total shits and love to humiliate each other, there’s also a punishment for _not_ wearing whatever terrible costume your secret skeleton picks out for you, which is that you have to provide breakfast every day in the Avengers’ common room at the Tower for a month, and serve it yourself.” Steve lets out an embarrassing giggle in spite of himself. “And you have to do it _in your underwear_.”

He covers his face with his hands, although there’s no one around to see him blush. “And Tony has so much blackmail material on all of us, I know he’d be able to force us to do it. So believe me, I’m gonna wear whatever costume my secret skeleton picks out for me. Just hope it’s not too bad, knock on wood.” He raps on the door twice with his knuckles, and Barnes immediately echoes him. _Knock knock._

“I’ll let you know what my costume is when I get it. I’ll even come the day of and get Dr. Zaidi to take a picture of me in it, if you want to see it.”

He pauses, and starts tearing the cardboard sleeve into strips. “So, I got kinda lucky, I guess, and the person I have to pick a costume for is Nat. As soon as I saw her name on the paper, I knew that I wanted to dress her up like Pippi Longstocking. Do you know who that is?” He chews on his bottom lip in thought. “I don’t remember the Pippi Longstocking books from when we were kids. I know they’re pretty old, but maybe they were published after the war.”

He nudges the cardboard strips into a pile and begins to tear them into tiny squares, one by one. “I only found out about them because Tony called her Pippi Longstocking one day and she got really mad. I mean, she just gave him one of her flat looks, but if you’ve spent enough time around Nat you know that means she’s about to knife you in the kidneys. So then I looked it up on the internet, and then bought the first two books at the Strand. They’re about a little girl who lives by herself with a monkey and a horse and has all these wild adventures. But the best part is that she has red hair, just like Nat, and she wears it in two braids that stick straight out from the sides of her head.”

He starts laughing and some of the cardboard confetti falls on the floor. He sweeps it up with the side of his hand and dumps it in the empty coffee cup, still giggling. “I gotta buy her the whole costume, because Pippi wears black shoes are too big and two different-colored thigh-high socks and a blue dress with red patches. And then I’m gonna make something out of a coat hanger that can go around her head and hold her braids up. I saw that in a tutorial on the internet.”

He claps his hands with anticipation, like a child. “She’s gonna hate it. She might knife me in the kidneys, but it’s gonna be so good.” The sudden movement tips the rest of the confetti onto the floor and he spends a minute struggling to pick it all up with his fingertips. “So I need to go to some thrift stores and see if I can find the shoes and a blue dress, and then I need to get some red cloth so that I can sew the patches on myself. Haven't figured out where to buy thigh-high socks, yet.”

“Alright, Barnes, it’s late enough that the stores I want to go to will be open, so I’m gonna head on out. I hope the rest of your day is good, and that you have a good night sleep, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodbye, Barnes.”

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes! I hope you’re having a good morning. My morning is totally, completely fucked because I just found out who my secret skeleton’s making me dress up as. It would be so, so funny if it were somebody else, like Clint, or Thor, but I’m pretty pissed that it’s gotta be me. Jesus christ. I hate my friends. When I find out who did this, I’m gonna make them pay.”

He’s giggling and fuming at the same time. It’s hilarious and infuriating. He doesn’t know if he wants Barnes to see him in costume or if he’d rather die, and he says so. “I know I told you I’d come by the day of and let Dr. Zaidi take a picture of me in costume, but I might die of humiliation. I can just picture you laughing at me. You’d be in hysterics.”

“Wish you could help me plot my revenge because it’s gotta be good. But first I have to do some super spy work and figure out what motherfucker set me up.” His teeth creak as he clenches his jaw. The costume is funny, and once he got over the initial shock, he secretly– very, very secretly– kind of likes it. But he’ll be damned if he lets anyone know that.

“Ok, so…” He pauses. He may not actually be able to say it out loud. “Oh, christ. Okay, so I have to go to the party dressed as the Black Widow.” He whispers the last part, afraid that the empty hallway is going to hear him and judge him, somehow. “In a fucking catsuit and a red wig and knee-high boots and everything.” His voice is almost inaudible, now, but all of a sudden there’s a muffled noise on the other side of the door, a choking sound that turns into a bark of laughter. Just one laugh, and then silence again, but Steve feels immediately like his heart has grown too big for his chest.

“You jerk!” he says, through a smile that threatens to split his face from ear to ear. “I can’t believe you’re laughing at me. I’m gonna have to wear a skintight catsuit and boots with four-inch heels and you’re not even commiserating? Some friend you are, jesus.”

He looks down at his hands and realizes that he’s unraveled the stitching around the hem of his hoodie. This is why he always has his sketchbook in his backpack, but he’d been so flustered this morning that he’d forgotten.

“God, this is gonna be the worst party of the century. I wish I could just stay home and hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. Or, at least, I wish…” He bites back the end of the thought, maybe it’s too much, too soon, but then he thinks _fuck it, why not_. “I wish you could come. You’d laugh yourself sick, but it would be a lot more fun with you there.”

* * *

Steve sticks his head in Dr. Zaidi’s office on the way out. “Hey! Do you have a minute?”

She waves him in with her hand and says, “Of course, of course, I’m just catching up on paperwork. How is everything?”

He stands in the doorway wringing his hands, just a little bit. “Actually, I’ve got another favor to ask. It’s really embarrassing. Really, really embarrassing. But you’re the only one I trust to do it.”

Dr. Zaidi cocks an eyebrow at him. “Well, come in and shut the door, then, and tell me all about it. I can’t promise to do whatever favor you need, but I can listen.”

Steve shuts the door and sits down in the leather chair. “Well, you see,” he begins, and he can feel himself already blushing. He clears his throat and leans forward with his elbows on his knees, looking up at Dr. Zaidi through his eyelashes, as if they could possibly protect him from the embarrassment. “On Friday I have to go to a Halloween party that Stark is throwing in the Tower. We all agreed to do a Secret Santa-type thing that Tony called Secret Skeleton, where you draw someone’s name and then you have to provide their costume. Mine is really embarrassing. Really, really embarrassing.”

He feels like his whole head is on fire. Dr. Zaidi’s eyebrows have migrated up her face and her lips are pressed together, like she’s hiding a much larger smile.

“It’s not obscene, it’s just embarrassing. But I was telling Barnes about it, and I think he’d get a big kick out of it. He always thought it was hilarious when I did something stupid. Would you… if I came here the day of, would you take a picture of my costume to show him? Please?”

Dr. Zaidi laughs out loud. “Of course, that’s no trouble at all. You can even change here in my office if you’d like. But I was planning to leave early because it’s a Friday and I promised my nieces that I’d take them trick-or-treating. Do you think you can be here by four o’clock? My brother and his family live in Jersey, so I have to drive all the way out there.” The way she says _Jersey_ makes it sound like someplace soft and green with a lot of cows.

“Yeah, of course, I’ll be here in the morning, like usual,” Steve says. “I’ll change into it here, and then change back again because there’s no way I’m wearing it around all day.” He laughs, and then cuts himself off with a grimace.

* * *

On the morning of the 31st, Steve has his daily conversation with Barnes, and then changes into his costume in Dr. Zaidi’s office while she waits on the other side of the closed door. When he’s as ready as he’ll ever be, he cracks the door and whispers loudly into the hall, “You can come back in.”

There’s a pause, and then: “Good _god_ , Captain Rogers, you lied to me, that is most definitely obscene.”

Steve covers his face with his hands. “Ah jesus, I’m so sorry, you can leave right now, I’ll change back.”

“No no,” Dr. Zaidi says, laughing. “I was joking. It’s definitely not… modest… but you’re all covered up and you look quite nice. The Black Widow, hmm? Which one of your friends put you up to this, anyway?”

“I have no idea,” Steve says, shaking his fist like an old-timey villain, “but when I find out, there’s gonna be hell to pay.”

“Well, alright, let’s get this photo taken so you can get back out of that costume. Why don’t you lean against the desk and I’ll take it from over by the doorway? I think if you sit down the effect will be spoiled.”

“Ugh, you’re probably right,” Steve says. If his face gets any hotter, he’s going to spontaneously combust. He leans against the desk, which is somewhat difficult to do now that he’s wearing four-inch knee-high wedge boots that make him six-and-a-half feet tall. He’s definitely going to make a stink at the party tonight about how Natasha is far too smart to wear wedges into battle; _her_ boots are much more practical and comfortable.

He also has a catsuit made from some shiny, stretchy material that isn’t _that_ much tighter than his normal uniform, but there are no panels or Kevlar or cutaways to hide what lies beneath. In particular, it clings around the hips in a way that leaves very little to the imagination, and Steve had had to get clever with his undergarments in order to avoid crossing the line between suggestive and pornographic. Despite the fact that the zip extends all the way up to the neck, some exceedingly clever and malevolent person has attached a tiny d-ring in between the teeth so that it can only be zipped up level with his nipples.

Then there’s a thigh holster and a utility belt that sits low on his hips, and to top it off, a long, sleek red wig that falls in in a curtain to his shoulders.

The costume has Tony written all over it, considering the expense involved in a custom-made catsuit. But he thinks Tony would have forced him into something truly silly, like a sexy banana costume, rather than something that makes him look really fucking hot. And he does feel there's something silly about the look, there’s no denying it; the incongruity between Natasha’s dainty chin and retroussé nose and his big, square face and thrice-broken beak under the red wig is striking. But he also knows, even though the loudest part of his mind tries to deny it, that he _does_ look really fucking hot.

“Alright, cross your arms and cross your legs at the ankles,” Dr. Zaidi says. “And try to control your blush a bit, if you can. You are quite the same color as your hair.” She’s grinning at his discomfort. Steve nods and takes a deep breath and focuses on getting into his cool, collected mission headspace. Dr. Zaidi snaps a photo. “Alright, now arms straight, put your hands behind you on the desk. Don’t smile. Perfect.” She takes another picture, then comes forward and shows him the phone. Although he's doing a pretty good imitation of Natasha’s glare in the second picture, the pose is just too come-hither to pull it off. But the first picture, the first picture is perfect. He looks like he wants to murder someone, preferably the person who drew his name from the helmet, and his arms crossed over his chest push his pecs up and out of the deep V of the catsuit. _Jesus fuckin’ christ_ , he thinks. For the first time in decades he has the urge to cross himself.

He clears his throat. “Uh, I guess whichever, you pick.” Oh god, he has to get out of this outfit right now, and it’ll take a whole barrel of Asgardian mead before he’s going to be able to put it on again. This was a mistake, Barnes will never let him forget this, not in a thousand years. He wishes desperately for a drink and a deep hole and a shovel with which to bury himself until tomorrow, if not for the rest of eternity.


	3. November

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, sorry I’m late today.” Steve closes his eyes, but without a visual anchor, the world starts to rock slowly around him. He opens his eyes again.

“Remember I told you about Thor’s mead? Well, I was so embarrassed about the costume last night that I just kept drinking and drinking to have something to do with my hands because the catsuit didn’t have any fucking pockets in it, _of course_ , and today I am _so_ hungover. If I had a corkscrew, I would trephine myself right now.”

Steve thumps his head softly against the door a couple times and groans.

“I didn’t make it back to Brooklyn last night. Thank god I’ve got spare clothes in my apartment at the Tower. I didn’t even wake up until ten o’clock, which is the latest I’ve slept since the _last_ time I had Thor’s mead.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose and then digs his thumbs into the divots on each side of it. It doesn’t help. “Bruce was in the communal kitchen making breakfast, god bless his soul. He doesn’t drink, you know, ‘cause he can’t lose control ‘cause of the big guy, so he takes it upon himself to nurse the rest of us the day after a party.”

His head feels like it’s half the usual size but filled with twice as much brain as normal. He runs his hands through his hair and scrunches them into fists, pulling his scalp tight. It’s weird, but it helps relieve headaches, sometimes. It works now until he lets go, and then the dull throb comes back with a vengeance.

“Bruce is a great cook, I don’t know where he learned. He made fried eggs and garlic toast and spicy chorizo split down the middle and grilled, plus fresh orange juice and great big pitchers of bloody marys. It was so, so good. I actually felt better for about five minutes afterwards. At least I don’t feel queasy anymore.”

He does feel like his gut is full of pig iron, though. He thumps his head against the door again, softly, for the microsecond of relief it gives him before the throb comes back.

“I think I want to learn how to cook,” he says contemplatively, tapping his chin with his fingers. “I can do the basics, enough to keep myself alive if takeout disappeared overnight. But apart from scrambled eggs, baked potatoes, pasta with sauce from a jar, and salad from a bag, I’m pretty lost in the kitchen. You were always the cook in our house, you know. We had a lot of fights about how many forkfuls of vegetables I had to eat before you’d let me up from the table.” He grins at the memory.

“I hated it when you treated me like a kid, and you hated it when I resisted your mothering. I remember one time you were being especially annoying about me eating my cabbage, and I actually hauled off and socked you in the mouth. It took about thirty seconds for you to pin me on the floor ‘cause you never went easy on me, and then you shoved a forkful of cabbage in my mouth and wouldn’t let me up until I chewed it up and swallowed it.” He’s laughing now, but it jars his head something awful.

“Jeez, even laughing makes me feel worse right now.” He feels happy, though, despite his general decrepitude.

“Anyway, I was thinking about going to the library and looking for some cookbooks, expand my repertoire a little. Partly because I want to eat good food without having to wait for delivery, but also because Thanksgiving’s coming up and I want to be able to bring something I actually made to Tony’s Thanksgiving dinner, even if it’s just mashed potatoes. But really good mashed potatoes.”

“It’s really nice being part of the Avengers, you know. They’re my coworkers, but we’re also all friends. And they’re all in the same boat as me, none of them have any family to speak of and nobody’s tied down to anybody at the moment except for Tony and Pepper, so we celebrate all the holidays together. Actually, you know, I think Clint and Nat may have something going on, but I can’t tell if they’re sleeping together or if they’ve adopted each other as siblings. And I value my life too much to insinuate.” He’s pulling his hair again, and thumping his head against the door at the same time.

“Okay, Barnes, I really should go home and try to sleep this off. My head feels terrible. I don't know if the serum's falling down on the job or if Asgardian mead is just that strong or what, but I feel like I'm being extruded through the bottom of a meat grinder. I don’t think I’m even going to take my bike ‘cause my head feels way too big to squeeze in the helmet.” He leans against the door again and sits silent for a few more minutes before he can gather himself enough to stand up. “Thank god it’s Saturday and Dr. Zaidi isn’t around to see me like this.” He laughs at himself, softly, but it makes him wince.

“Goodbye Barnes, I hope you have a good afternoon, see you tomorrow.”

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, you’re gonna be really proud of me, I went to the library yesterday and checked out a bunch of cookbooks, and this morning I made myself pancakes from scratch!”

He unzips his backpack and pulls out his sketchbook and his pencil case.

“It was easy, actually, although I had stop on the way back from the library to buy measuring cups and spoons and a spatula and a whisk. And baking soda and flour and maple syrup. As you can tell, probably, I’m not actually _that_ good at living by myself.” He laughs at himself, a little sheepishly, and then says, quietly, “Nat really saved my ass by forcing me to buy furniture and live like a real person, but she can’t be watching my back 24-7. I gotta do it myself.”

He feels a little ripple of sadness pass through him, but it’s just a blip, gone the next moment. “I only have one frying pan, and it only fits two pancakes at a time, so I did a little research and I’m gonna buy a griddle for the stovetop. You know they still make them from cast iron like the one my ma had?”

He doesn’t have any particular ideas this morning, so he starts doodling stacks of pancakes, a mixing bowl filled with batter, his own hand holding a spatula flipping a pancake in midair.

“Food is so great nowadays, you know. You would not believe the things they have at the farmer’s market. Everything there looks like it should be in a magazine spread about fancy restaurants or something, and there are tons of weird things that I’ve never even heard of.”

He starts to draw the pyramids of vegetables under the awning of his favorite farm stall. “I bought something yesterday called kohlrabi, which looks like a turnip but with leaves sticking out all over the turnip part, and it's bright purple. It tastes like a turnip, too, just a little more spicy. Actually, the guy who sold it to me said it was in the turnip family, whatever that means. You know I know nothing about plants.”

“I actually don’t know what to do with it, besides cook it like a turnip, but let’s be honest, I don’t know how you cook turnips, either. Besides boil them to mush. But Bruce told me that the internet is really great for looking up recipes and he gave me the names of a few sites he likes, so I’m gonna go home and go through all my new cookbooks and then scour the internet to find something to make with kohlrabi.”

A little line of kohlrabies with arms and legs have appeared at the bottom of the page, each one kicking high in the air like they’re doing the can-can. Sometimes he wonders where these things come from; he’ll be thinking about something else and, all of a sudden, his hands have drawn a whole vegetable musical revue of their own accord, with seemingly no input from his higher-level brain functions.

“Not everything’s better, of course. Sugar seems to be everywhere, no idea why. The jarred pasta sauce I buy has sugar in it, and it’s good, but I remember the sauce your ma made didn’t have any sugar in it and it was so much better.”

He thinks for a minute, tapping the pencil on his chin. “I wonder if I could replicate your ma’s sauce somehow? I don’t remember much about it except the taste. It was tomatoes from a can, and an onion? Maybe some garlic? That’s not much to go by. Even tomatoes from a can might be different than they used to be, I dunno.”

He pauses for a moment, struck by an idea. Then he flips the sketchbook over to the next blank page and starts blocking out another scene: Bucky’s ma, Winifred Barnes, in her kitchen, stirring a pot of tomato sauce. He can picture the scene perfectly in his head. She’s got her flowered apron on, the one with the faded pink roses, and her curly brown hair, so like Becca’s, is tied back from her face with a handkerchief. Someone is sitting at the table, Bucky or Becca, he’ll fill them in later, and Winifred is looking over her shoulder at them with a smile. He can almost see the phrase “my darling” sitting half-formed on her lips. God knows he spent so many hours sitting at that kitchen table waiting for dinner, he can conjure up the whole scene without half thinking about it. Whoever is sitting at the table is probably doing their homework, and Steve, in his chair facing the stove, would have his sketchbook out. The radio, in the living room through the doorway behind him, is playing music, or maybe a baseball game. No, actually, he realizes, if it was a baseball game, he and Bucky would have been sitting in front of it with their heads pressed together in order to catch every word of the play-by-play.

He realizes with a start that he’s been silent for five minutes, maybe more. “Ah, sorry, Barnes, I spaced out a bit. I was starting a new drawing and I got lost in the zone.”

He draws the outline of the window over the sink that looked onto the alley and the yellow gingham curtains tied back on either side. “Where was I? Right, your ma’s pasta sauce. So I’ll look around the internet a bit, see if I can find something that’s similar enough. Won’t ever be the same, though.”

To his dismay, he feels his eyes start to prickle. _Jesus, he’s got enough on his plate without listening to you cry about his ma. Change the subject, dumbass_. He takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it out again, just like Dr. Castaño showed him. “So apart from kohlrabi and good pasta sauce, I wanna learn how to cook breakfast stuff so that I don’t have to eat breakfast out every day or have, like, cereal from a box or leftovers from dinner. And then I thought that maybe I’ll set myself a goal of buying one weird thing at the farmer’s market every week and then finding out how to cook it.”

Absently, he glances at his watch, and realizes that he was supposed to meet Tony at the Tower forty-five minutes ago. “Oh shit, I just saw the time and I am really late for a meeting. It’s just Tony, but even he’s gonna get pissed if I keep him waiting for an hour. I gotta go.”

He closes the sketchbook and hurriedly stows everything in his backpack. “Alright, Barnes, I hope you have a good afternoon and a good night’s sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodbye.”

* * *

The next week, Dr. Zaidi calls out from her office one day as he’s on his way to Barnes’s room. “Captain Rogers, one moment.”

He sticks his head in the doorway. “Hey, Dr. Zaidi, what’s up?”

“I’ve got something to talk to you about.” He frowns immediately, and she holds up a placating hand. “Nothing bad, I promise. But it might take us more than a few minutes. Would any day this week be good for you to stop in after you talk to Barnes?”

“How much time are we talking about? I don’t have anything pressing to do today, but I did want to go to the Strand before lunch, so…” he looks at his watch. “In an hour and a half? If I cut my time with Barnes a little short, I could give you maybe forty-five minutes? Is that enough?”

“Probably, but I don’t want you to spend less time with Barnes. I’d rather talk another day, if there’s one that works for you.”

Steve taps his fingers on his chin, thinking. “Well, tomorrow I was going to go to spar with Natasha after I left here, but she’s flexible and I could meet her after lunch instead. That would give me plenty of time, then.”

Dr. Zaidi gives him her friendly, eye-crinkling smile. “Perfect, then I’ll see you tomorrow whenever you’re finished.”

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Mornin’ Barnes, I hope you had a good night’s sleep. I actually don’t have anything to do in Manhattan today, even though it’s a Wednesday, ‘cause most of the rest of the team is out on a mission, so no training. And miraculously, nobody else needs me for a meeting. So I’m gonna go down to the Strand after I’m done talking to you and pick up some new books.”

He stretches his legs out along the floor and wiggles his toes inside his sneakers. He feels remarkably relaxed, with nothing to do right now but talk about books and nothing to do later but go buy some. “A few weeks ago I was with the team and we were shooting the shit and Bruce found out that I’d never read _Harry Potter_ and he was absolutely appalled. I mean, I knew who Harry Potter was, vaguely, because there were movies. I’ve never seen them, though. But apparently the books are a cultural touchstone or something. Everybody said so, even Clint, and I wasn’t even sure Clint knew how to read.”

He giggles at himself like an idiot. “That was a joke. Clint’s actually really smart, he just acts like a dodo sometimes. Or all the time. You’d like him.”

“Anyway, so they told me I had to read _Harry Potter_. Bruce ran up to his floor and brought down all the books in the series to lend me, I guess so I wouldn’t have any excuse not to read them. It seemed kind of silly, right? The whole series is about these kids who are wizards and go to magic school. I thought maybe I’d read the first one and then make my excuses and give the rest of them back. But they’re so good Barnes, you have no idea. Or maybe you do? I don’t know what they give you to read here. But you should definitely read the _Harry Potter_ books. I finished the whole series in one week even though it’s like 4,000 pages because I hardly did anything but sit on my couch and read.”

He points his toes again, stretching his calves, and wiggles a little on the floor from sheer bullheaded contentedness.

“God, Barnes, you’ve gotta go to the Strand sometime. I remember how much you used to read, you practically kept the library in business all by yourself. You know, there was this one time you…”

He’s interrupted by his phone ringing. He’d put in on silent when he got in the elevator, like he always does, but the Avengers alert is programmed to ring even if the phone is turned off.

“Ah shit, it’s the Avengers. Gimme a second, Barnes, I gotta take this.”

He gets up and walks around the corner and down the hall to the elevator bank. Dr. Zaidi looks up from her desk as he walks by and he gives her a small wave.

“This is Cap, what’s up?”

“Cap! It’s Bruce, there’s been a complication with the mission, we’re being called up. Where are you?”

“At SHIELD, how much time do I have?”

“No time, you and me and Iron Man need to be on the ground as soon as possible. It’d be quicker for you to come here and take the helicopter than to go straight to the airport, so hop to it. Everything will be ready when you get here.”

Steve scrubs a hand over his face and sighs. “Okay Bruce, will do. Thanks.”

He starts back down the hall, pausing in Dr. Zaidi’s doorway. “I’ve been called up, it’s an emergency.” She nods understandingly. “When I come back, we’ll reschedule our appointment, okay?”

Dr. Zaidi gives him a reassuring smile. “Yes, of course. Don’t worry about the appointment. It’s just to check in, and it’ll keep. Just do what you have to do. And be safe.”

“Thanks, Dr. Zaidi,” he says, and turns to go.

He jogs back around the corner and stands in front of Barnes’s door. He can hear the rustling sound of Barnes getting to his feet on the other side. “Sorry pal, I’ve gotta run. Something’s gone pear-shaped with the mission and they need me.”

He puts the palm of his hand on the door, fingers spread, and wonders, again, if Barnes can sense it, maybe does the same on the other side. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. I hope I won’t be gone too long.”

He pauses, even though he knows that the clock is ticking. “Look, Barnes.” He clears his throat. “Please take care of yourself, okay? If I think you’re not gonna be sleeping or eating right while I’m gone, I’m gonna worry about it. I know this, this thing”– he gestures between his chest and the door before remembering that Barnes can’t see him– “I mean, me coming to talk to you every day, I know it's become part of your daily routine, and that gets interrupted when I’m on a mission. And I’m not gonna, like, ask Dr. Zaidi for a progress report or anything when I get back, but I… I…” He stops, takes a deep breath. _Get it together, Rogers._ “I care about you, you know, and it helps me to know that you’re doing okay.”

He taps his knuckles softly against the door. _Knock knock knock_. Just as softly, comes the reply, _knock_ pause _knock knock knock_. “Alright, I really gotta go. Please take care of yourself, and don’t worry about me. I’m gonna be safe because I’m leaving all the stupid here with you, okay? Goodbye, Barnes.”

* * *

Steve gets back three days later, on Friday, at eleven o’clock at night. It’s too late to debrief, so they all agree to sleep at the Tower and meet with Hill and Fury first thing in the morning. When Steve asks the driver that picks them all up at the airport to drop him off at SHIELD, Tony cracks a half-hearted joke about conjugal visits, but Steve bares his teeth and gives him such a savage look that Tony pales visibly and apologizes while trying to shrink down behind a half-asleep Natasha. 

“Sorry, Cap, sorry. Dumb joke. Christ, I didn’t realize you were so sensitive about it.”

From the back seat, his eyes closed and the side of his face smushed against the van window, Bruce says, “Shut the fuck up, Tony. It’s been a long couple of days.”

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

Steve stands next to Barnes’s door. He hears the rustle of blankets being moved around and then the quick, soft pad of Barnes walking across the room. He slides down and rests his head wearily against the doorframe.

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes,” he says, softly. “I just got back. Hope I didn’t wake you up, but I wanted to come here first before I went to the Tower. I’m gonna sleep there tonight because we have debriefing first thing in the morning, but all I really wanna do is talk to you and then go home. To Flatbush, I mean.”

He closes his eyes and listens to Barnes’s steady heartbeat on the other side of the door and the comforting, quiet rhythm of his breathing. “It… it was a bad op. I had to make some tough calls. There were civilian casualties, and some were the direct result of decisions I made. It was the best possible outcome and any other decision would have left a ton more people dead, but it still feels like a failure when somebody dies on my watch.”

He sits there, staring off into space, so exhausted that he feels like he can’t think in a straight line. He goes to scratch his nose with his left hand when he realizes, “Oh, and I broke my arm.”

He hears Barnes inhale sharply through his nose. “It’s okay, I’m okay. I’ve got it in a brace, and it’ll be good as new in another day or two. I was never in any real danger.” He’d been thrown off a four-story building, but his conception of “real danger” has always been very loose. Either Barnes remembers that or he doesn’t, and Steve’s not about to ask.

“I’m so glad Dr. Zaidi forced me to find a therapist, because I’m really gonna need her after this week. I can’t believe I went so long without therapy, honestly. I can’t remember how I coped before, but I guess I just did it by repressing everything. Or, you know, crashing planes into the ocean.” He laughs, but then he hears a muffled noise from the other side of the door, something anguished bitten off sharply, and his heart jumps up into his throat. “Ah shit, sorry,” he says quickly, the words tumbling over themselves. “That was a really bad joke. I’m sorry, Barnes.” He digs the knuckles of his right hand into his eye sockets, first one and then the other, rubbing hard. “Dr. Castaño says I rely too much on gallows humor because I haven’t sufficiently processed my trauma. She’s probably right, but I’m so tired I can’t process anything but a REM cycle right now.”

He yawns hugely, covering his mouth. “I’m so, so tired. If I had a cot or a camping mattress or even a sleeping bag that I could roll out, I’d just go to sleep right here in front of your door. But I should probably head on back to the Tower and sleep in an actual bed.” He rubs his forehead back and forth against the door, relishing the almost-imperceptible scratch of the fine-grained wood. “I wish I could stay longer since I haven’t been here in a couple days. But you need to get back to bed, too.”

He spreads his palm out on the door again. There’s something comforting about it, however one-sided it may be. “Okay, Barnes. I’ll come back tomorrow after the debriefing. I dunno how long that’s gonna take, but I should be back here before lunch. It’s nice to talk to you again after a few days away. Have a good night’s sleep. Goodbye.”

* * *

The next Monday, after he talks to Barnes, Steve knocks on Dr. Zaidi’s doorframe, and when she looks up, he gives her a little wave and says, “What’s your schedule look like today? I’m totally free, so we can have our appointment if sometime today is good for you.”

“Well, I’ve got a meeting in half an hour, but it’s only planning, so I can push it back a bit. Let me send an email and I’ll be right with you.”

He walks inside her office and shuts the door. She gestures to the leather chair in front of her desk with one hand and smiles at him. “One moment.”

“Sure, sure. Take your time.”

Half a minute later she stops typing and pulls a plain, black cloth-bound notebook over from the side of her desk, opening the cover and flipping through a few pages until she finds what she’s looking for. “I wanted to bring you in to talk about Barnes’s progress. He’s been here a little more than two months, you know, so I think it would be good to give you a status report, something to catch you up on how he’s doing, and to talk about what we can expect in the future.”

Steve nods, rubbing his hand over his mouth. “That’d be good. Yeah.” He flattens his mouth to a thin line, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth. “Honestly, I haven’t really thought much about the future. On purpose, otherwise I’d drive myself crazy. I don’t know what to expect, or even if I should be expecting anything at all. I don’t even know what role I’m playing here, not really, or what that’s gonna look like in two weeks, or two months, or a year down the road.”

“That’s understandable,” Dr. Zaidi says, and takes a deep breath. “I wish you could have been more involved in the process from the start. But I still have to operate under committee oversight, even if Director Fury has the last word and generally gives me free rein. And the committee believes that you’re too invested in Barnes’s recovery to allow me any latitude in this matter.”

Steve feels the familiar bubble of anger well up inside him again, hot as magma. “Fucking christ, of course I’m invested! Sorry, bad language,” he says, grimacing, but Dr. Zaidi just smiles and waves him off like she doesn’t care, so he continues. “I mean, we’ve known each other for ninety years! He’s my best friend! He’s like family, he was even back then, he’s, he’s…” He’s struggling to get the words out, but they’re all jammed together. He brain wants to blurt out, _He’s all I have_ , but he’s aware of how pathetic it sounds, and the anger and indignation and mortification ball the words up in his throat.

Dr. Zaidi holds up a pacifying hand. “I understand, Captain Rogers. Believe me, I do. But this is what we have to work with, and getting angry is not going to change that. I do have good news, though, so if you want to take a moment to collect yourself, I think we should move on.”

He heaves a heavy sigh and rubs his eyes with his fingertips, then runs his fingers through his hair. He feels calmer. “Sorry. You’re right, of course. You’re always right.” He laughs, not bitterly, but not happily.

“It’s my job to be right about these things, you know,” she says, softly, and Steve nods.

“But as I was saying, I’ve got good news about Barnes and better news about the future. Which one do you want to hear first?”

Steve gives her a small smile, a little embarrassed at his outburst. “Start with the good stuff and work up to the better stuff, I guess?”

“Alright. You should know, of course, that I have his permission to share all of this with you.” Steve nods. “Well, I’m very optimistic. Barnes is doing wonderfully, much better than my original projections. He’s more verbal and interacts more than he did when he came in, and every day he recovers more memories. Most of them are memories from his time with Hydra, which is good for SHIELD. Unfortunately, he has far fewer memories of his pre-Hydra life.” The familiar crease appears between her eyebrows, but she doesn’t look upset. Just sorry.

“The discrepancy could be due to many things, from the amount of time that has passed since his pre-Hydra days to the fact that he has fewer reminders of them.” She’s been looking down at her notebook, but now she looks Steve in the eye. “In fact, you’re really the only reminder he has of that time. He’s still not ready to talk to you, or to see you face-to-face, but I believe that once he is, he will make more progress recovering those memories than he has so far.”

“So…” Steve says, seizing on the one thing in this conversation that makes his heart skip. “So you think he’s gonna be ready to talk to me someday?”

Dr. Zaidi gives him a fond smile, but it’s a little exasperated. “Of course, Captain Rogers. We’ve talked about this before. He’s not pushing you away. He’s just taking the time he needs to come back. Give him a little more time, let him move at his own pace.”

Steve smiles sheepishly. “Yeah, I know. Just got a little too hopeful for a moment.”

“Well, maybe this is good segue to the better news, then.”

Steve sits up a little straighter in his chair. He thinks that if he were a dog, he’d have his ears perked up right now.

“When Barnes came in, we discovered, through a combination of experimentation and his own testimony, that he had a lot of very deeply ingrained programming. Trigger words, implanted memories, and a very thorough conditioning. We have made a lot of progress on his deprogramming, although the work is not done yet, and we can’t release him until we are sure that he is not going to be a danger to himself or to others. However, I’m confident enough in his progress to say that I think that, if there are no unexpected setbacks, we may be able to discharge him within the next few months.”

“Really?” Steve can feel his face light up like the sun. He feels like Dr. Zaidi should be squinting at the sudden blaze of bright joy that runs through him.

She gives him a wide, happy smile. “I knew you were going to like that.”

“Yeah, of course! Jeez, that’s such great news! Wow, I thought it was going to be much longer than that.”

“I did too, in September, but he’s been working very, very hard. It’s not that he’s exactly miserable here, but he certainly would rather be on the outside.”

“Yeah, of course.” Steve feels giddy and a little overwhelmed. “So… so where’s he gonna go? Do you have, like, a halfway house or something? Or does he also get sent to the cabin upstate like I did?”

Dr. Zaidi smiles like she’s got a secret. “Well, it’s not official yet, so if I tell you, you need to keep it under wraps.” Steve nods quickly, his hair flopping across his forehead. “But I have Director Fury’s support on this, so I’m confident that nothing is going to change in the next few months. We’d actually like to release him directly into your custody, if you’ll have him.”

Steve’s jaw drops and his eyes bug out of his head. “Really?” he squeaks. Dr. Zaidi nods, her eyes crinkling up. “Of course, I’ll have him, of course, of course!”

Steve can’t help himself; he gets up and starts pacing between the door and the chair, running his hands over and over through his hair. “Wow, I never expected that. I thought Fury was gonna keep him under lock and key for much longer, and then give him some freedom but keep him here, or send him to another facility.” He spins on his heel and looks at Dr. Zaidi, a little wildly. “I’m kinda overwhelmed.”

“That’s understandable, and it’s why I’m telling you now and not in February.”

“So… so what do I need to do? Do I have to prepare anything? I own a house in Brooklyn, you know, but I can move to Manhattan if that’s what he needs.”

“Well, first, you can sit back down and stop wearing a hole in my carpet.” Dr. Zaidi points to the chair and Steve drops himself into it with a thump. “Of course, there are going to be a lot of things that we’ll need to go over. Moving won’t be necessary, though. I’m sure that wherever you live will be perfectly fine. More than anything, he’s going to need support, which I have no doubt that you’ll provide, and familiarity and routine. I’m going to recommend that whenever he’s ready to be released, you take a leave of absence so that you can help him get settled.”

“Yeah, of course, no problem,” Steve says. Who knows, maybe it’ll be a problem, but he doesn’t care. “Honestly, it’ll probably do me good, too. I haven’t taken a vacation since I came out of the ice three years ago.” He pauses for a second. “Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve never taken a vacation. Ever.”

Dr. Zaidi widens her eyes and purses her lips, then says, “Well. I do agree, I think it will be a benefit to you both. I’ve talked to Director Fury about it already, but you will have to go through the details with him yourself.”

She glances at the clock on the wall and says, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut our meeting short. I really did want to go over some more details with you, but I’ve got another appointment in ten minutes. None of the details were urgent, though. I mostly wanted to give you the news about Barnes so that you could start getting used to the idea.”

“Yeah, thanks, I really appreciate it.” Steve gives her a big, friendly smile and stands up.

“Thank you so much, Captain Rogers. Since there are more things to discuss, we should set another date to talk, but perhaps it would be better to wait until December, when we’ve got more solid information.” Steve nods and moves to open the door. “Oh, and he knows everything I’ve told you, but I suggest not making his possible release a point of conversation. It may make him feel pressured in a way we want to avoid.”

“Yeah, of course, I totally understand.”

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, hope you’re having a good day. I brought something a little different to keep my hands occupied today. I’ve got stuff to do some pastel work ‘cause I need to get started on my Christmas presents, although I’m not gonna do the actual part with the pastels here because it’s a nightmare to transport once you get started.”

He pulls his pencil case out of his backpack and opens the portfolio he’d brought, slipping out a piece of smoke-colored pastel card.

“I decided I’m gonna give everybody portraits this year. Nat is the only one who knows that I draw, actually. She was at my house one day looking though my bookshelf and found one of my sketchbooks from last year. She said she was surprised that I was so good, but that she already knew I was artistic. Apparently, I have artistic hands, which sounds like bullshit? But she’s the spy, so I guess she knows about things like that?”

He runs the pads of his fingers lightly over the pastel card, relishing the feel of its soft, velvety tooth. “I bought the really good paper ‘cause I want these to be really good presents. I’m not gonna do pastels for everybody, though. Maybe only Nat. She’s got a hard edge, like, the hardest edge in the world. When you first meet her she seems all hard edge and nothing else. But she’s actually kinda soft inside. That’s why I’m doing her in pastels.”

He rummages in the portfolio again and pulls out a small, loose pencil sketch, his study for Natasha’s portrait. “Tony will probably be in ink, Clint in pencil, or maybe charcoal, Thor in acrylic, and Sam in oils. I actually started Sam’s portrait already ‘cause oils take forever to dry. I haven’t decided what to do about Bruce, yet, maybe pastels, too.”

He pulls a pencil out of his pencil case and starts to trace the barest outline on the card.

“Nat gave me these pastels for my birthday this year. She must have gone to the art supply store and asked for the most expensive thing they had because, jesus, they’re amazing. Best ones I’ve ever had.”

He pulls his kneaded eraser out of his pencil case and touches it lightly to the outline, here and there. “I kinda hate my birthday now, you know. I can’t…” He pauses for a long minute. Should he be telling Barnes this? _Fuck it._ “Remember how I used to love going to see the fireworks on my birthday? Well, can’t do fireworks anymore. I can’t. I just…”

His heart is beating double-time just thinking about it. After a moment he realizes that Barnes’s heartbeat has sped up, too. _Shit, my anxiety is contagious._ He takes a moment to collect himself, breathe deep, remind himself that he is safe, it’s 2014, he’s sitting in the basement of the SHIELD headquarters in Manhattan, Bucky– _no, Barnes–_ is on the other side of the door.

“I don’t have a problem with explosions or loud noises when I’m on a mission. The opposite, actually. Explosions and loud noises mean action, which is vastly preferable to silence, which means infil and espionage. But I can’t handle them in a civilian setting. I learned that the hard way my first birthday after the ice, when I lost my goddamn mind at Tony’s Fourth of July party and disappeared. Nat eventually found me ten floors down in a supply closet.”

He’s not drawing anymore, just brushing his fingertips lightly over the pastel card, back and forth, back and forth. “PTSD, Dr. Castaño says, and I guess she’s probably right. She says it’ll get better with time, too, and exposure. But I’d rather just avoid fireworks if I can.”

He can tell he’s not going to get anything else done today, so he slides the pastel card back into his portfolio before he forgets himself and starts tearing it into confetti or something. It was _very_ expensive paper. “This year, on my birthday, I downloaded a bunch of music on my phone, and I packed some food and these amazing new future things called noise-cancelling headphones and drove all the way out to the Montauk lighthouse. The nearest fireworks were a couple miles back in the town, far enough away that I could just sit on the beach looking out towards Nantucket and listen to music and draw in peace.”

He draws his knees up to his chest and rests his head against the door. “I stayed there all night, actually. It was nice to see the sun rise over the ocean. But it was pretty lonely.”

He hears on the other side of the door, quiet, so quiet that he halfway thinks he may have imagined it, a watery sniff.

Tears spring to his own eyes and he bites the knuckles of his left hand until he’s reasonably sure that his voice is under control. “Barnes. It’s okay. I’m getting better.” He breathes in deeply through his nose and pushes it out slowly through pursed lips. “Maybe next year will be different.”

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, happy Thanksgiving! I know I’m a little late today, but I had to get all of my stuff ready for Thanksgiving dinner at the Tower before I could leave. I’m not actually bringing mashed potatoes ‘cause Bruce found out that I’ve been teaching myself how to cook and told me that I was required to make a little more effort. The potatoes got reassigned to Clint ‘cause none of us are sure he can actually boil water and they were the easiest thing to give him.”

He’s carrying his backpack and a cast-iron dutch oven wrapped up in every single dishtowel he owns and tied with a piece of twine. He crosses his legs and sets the dishtowel-wrapped bundle in his lap to keep it off the cold marble floor.

“I made caramelized shallots. I know it’s not really traditional, but I found a recipe for it a while ago and I was waiting for the opportunity to make it. I don’t really make sides when it’s just me, you know, it kinda seems like a waste of time. I mean, who am I trying to impress?”

The bundle on his lap is starting to get uncomfortably warm, so he shifts it onto the floor

“I wasn’t actually sure how good they were gonna be. I mean, I’ve used shallots before in cooking or, like, making a vinaigrette, but these are whole entire shallots that you cook with butter and sugar and a little vinegar. I thought maybe they’d be too oniony, but they’re wonderful. And I’m not just saying that because I’m the one who made them. I gotta say, though, I’ve come a long way since I got those cookbooks out of the library.” He laughs at himself, under his breath. “Maybe I’ve got a gift. Maybe I should retire from avengering and go to culinary school. What do you think about that, huh?”

He pauses, thinking about it himself for the first time. _Wow. Where did that come from?_ “Hmm. I’ve… I’ve never actually thought about that until I just now said it out loud. Quitting, I mean. Doing something else.”

He pulls his legs up against his chest and rests his chin on his knees. “It’s a good question, though, isn’t it? And I guess… I guess maybe you’re thinking about the same thing. For yourself, I mean. Since you’re in a kind of transition period. I guess.” He sighs. “It’s been a really long time since either one of us were regular people.”

He feels gloom, like a witch’s familiar, raise its head in his chest. But there’s also a small, perverse satisfaction that he’s got somebody else, now, in the same situation. Shared life experience, and all that. “So, what do you want to do with yourself? SHIELD’s gonna let you out some time, and if you decided that you want to come work with me and do a little avengering we would, god, we would welcome you with open arms. But maybe you’re done fighting. And that’s... hmm. Honestly, maybe that’s the better option.”

He thinks about the Barnes he knew before the war, his lively, blithe spirit, his cheerful, open face, the ribbing, the playfulness, and the unplumbable well of kindness that made him universally beloved. “I don’t wanna sway your decision at all, I’m actually a little sorry I even said anything. But we live in the future now, you could do anything you want! Go back to school and study, I dunno, modern dance. Or become a mechanic. Or a trail guide in the Catskills. Or… or… just stay at home and read. You could make a full-time job of it, easy peasy. I know I’ve said this before, but there is so much science fiction in the future and it is all so good. Future people have better imaginations than we did, it seems.”

He realizes he’s been gesticulating with his hands although there’s no one around to see him. “I’m getting a little carried away, I think. Probably I’m just projecting my own wishes onto you. That’s what Dr. Castaño would say, and I think she’d be right. Maybe _I’m_ the one who’d like to go back to school or become a mechanic or a trail guide. I dunno. Like I said, I haven’t given it much thought. Or any thought. But maybe I should.”

He sits in silence for a minute, thinking about all of the people he sees every day in the neighborhood, about their hundreds of different jobs. Which ones have jobs that make them happy? What about the guys who sit on the bench in front of the bodega every evening? Andrei works in accounting and Félix has the air-conditioning business and Julián only says he’s a handyman, but he looks smug when he says it, whatever that means. Probably something quasi-legal that he doesn’t want Captain America to know about, although Steve Rogers doesn’t care.

And then there’s Chus, the owner of the bodega itself. She puts in long hours, but she knows everybody in the neighborhood and never seems to be bored. Maybe he could be a high school teacher, like Daniel, the guy who lives on the top floor of the brownstone next door to his. He doesn’t know much about the couple that lives on the ground floor, but the man does something white-collar in Manhattan, judging from his clothes and his commuting hours, and the woman stays at home with their baby. Maybe… maybe. Maybe he could just adopt a parcel of kids and be a stay-at-home dad.

_Ha ha. Imagine that. Me, a dad._

All of a sudden, he feels like he’s stepped on the hidden rake of repressed thoughts and the handle of overwhelming emotion has flown up to smack him in the face.

_SWEET FUCKING CHRIST_. _Holy shit. Holy shit._

He’s vaguely aware that tears are starting to run down his face, but it’s not that he feels sad, just… just like there’s a matinee in his temporal lobe of every emotion he’s ever felt in his life, and they’re all playing simultaneously, a chaotic hornet’s nest of light and color and sound.

He knows his heartbeat is jackrabbiting all over the place, and he must sound like he’s having an asthma attack. He can’t gauge Barnes’s reaction because he can’t hear anything over the pounding of blood in his own ears. _Poor guy_ , some part of him thinks, distantly. _Why couldn’t I have waited until I got home to have a breakdown_?

“Okay, look,” he says, choking down a sob. “I know you can hear me freaking out over here but it’s okay, I just started thinking and I went down a rabbit hole and I don’t really know where all this is coming from. I’m definitely gonna need to call Dr. Castaño tomorrow. But, uh, I’m gonna just do a couple of laps up and down the hall, okay? Just for a minute, until I get myself under control. Wait for me,” he adds, nonsensically, as he jumps to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”

He jumps up and walks down to the end of the hall and around the corner to the elevator bank and then comes back again, passing Barnes’s door and turning around again when he reaches the fire doors at the far end. _Okay, dumbass, calm down. You’re gonna freak him out. He doesn’t deserve this. Save it for therapy._ _Think about cooking. Breathe. Think about making bread. Breathe._

He rounds the corner again and passes by Dr. Zaidi’s office. He hasn’t seen her all week; he thinks she’s probably on vacation. _Thank fuck nobody’s around to see me like this._

He reaches the elevator banks and makes an about-face. _Okay. Breathe. Bread. Um, step one, you measure the yeast and add it to the warm water. Step two, you measure out the flour in the big glass bowl and add a little bit of sugar. When the yeast is all foamy, you dump it into the bowl and mix it all with the wooden spoon. That was step three. The bamboo spoon is best. Step four, you dump it out on the counter, which is already cleaned and dusted with flour, ‘cause in my imagination I never forget an important step, and then you knead it until it’s smooth and does the windowpane thing. Step five or six, you put it back in the bowl, which is already oiled, of course, and cover it with a dishtowel and let it rise._

He’s back in front of Barnes’s door again. He doesn’t know how many laps he’s done, but it’s enough. He’s got himself under control, although his nose is still running and his stomach is growling. He sits down on the floor again with a thump and a sigh.

“Sorry, Barnes. I’m really sorry. I’ve got a lot of issues to work out, you know, and sometimes they just jump out and slap me upside the head when I’m least expecting it.” He digs a pack of tissues out of his backpack and blows his nose and scrubs at the drying tears on his face with the sleeve of his hoodie.

“Anyway! Anyway. I wish I didn’t have to go and leave you. It doesn’t look like there’s anybody else here besides the skeleton crew on security. I haven’t seen Dr. Zaidi all week, actually. I hope she’s on vacation, she deserves it. But even if you’re just staying in your room all day, this place seems more lively when it’s a regular workday. I guess I’m probably projecting, again, though. Maybe you don’t mind at all.”

He huffs out a sigh and rubs his dry, smarting eyes with his knuckles. “So, it’s Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for a lot of things, I guess. For the Avengers, of course. As a team, ‘cause they’re great, but even more as a… a family. It’s kind of like the Howlies, but different. It’s a different kind of family, but it’s a good one.”

“I’m thankful for the future. Sometimes it’s weird and there are some things about it I really hate, but mostly I love it. Vaccinations are good, there's better food, and air conditioning, and movies with special effects, the internet, advances in human rights. I could go on about it for ten minutes.”

“And, I’m… I’m thankful for you. So thankful, you have no idea. Jesus, we’re alive, Barnes, both of us, and we’re living in the future. I have no idea what I ever did to deserve this life and honestly, sometimes I can’t tell if it was something really bad or something really good, but I’m so thankful we made it here at the same time. Even if we didn’t get here together.”

“Okay, I really have to go. It’s already twelve-thirty and we’re eating at one o’clock, and my shallots are probably cold by now, and I need to get them to the kitchen pronto so I can reheat them. Happy Thanksgiving, Barnes, I hope you have a good rest of your day. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Goodbye.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole time I was writing Steve's hangover scene I was thinking about that part in _Lucky Jim_ , which is the funniest hangover scene in literature:
> 
> "His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad."
> 
> \-----
> 
> [Caramelized shallots](https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/04/caramelized-shallots/) are a thing that I actually make every Thanksgiving because they are delicious.


	4. December

Knock knock knock

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, can you believe it’s December already? What a fucking year. I’m really glad that it’s almost over, ‘cause it feels like it’s been the longest year of my life. So many wild things have happened.”

Steve unzips his backpack and pulls out his pencil case and a folder with loose sheets of paper in it. “I’m gonna work on some of the prelim sketches for my Christmas presents while I’m here. I’ve got Sam’s and Nat’s finished already, gonna start on Tony’s right now. I originally thought about doing just pen and ink on really nice paper, but then the other day I was in the art supply store and I ran across some gold leaf, so I think I’m gonna gild part of it, probably the arc reactor.”

He opens his pencil case and pulls out a 2H and his eraser. “I’m gonna start with the sketch and then I need to go home and practice gilding ‘cause I’ve never actually done it. Couldn’t afford gold leaf before, of course.” He sets the point of the pencil on the paper and starts to giggle. “I’m just imaging what would have happened if you’d come home from a double shift at the docks one night and”– he’s laughing so hard now he has to stop a second to gasp for breath– “and I told you that I needed to buy more paint and, oh, by the way, also some gold leaf.”

He’s hooting softly to himself, wiping his eyes. “I don’t know why I find that so funny. You certainly never begrudged me money for art supplies, even when we could barely keep ourselves fed. But I think you might’ve had something to say if I’d asked for money for gold leaf.”

He sighs happily. “Anyway. It’s December! It’s finally cold enough to feel like it’s really winter. It hasn’t snowed yet, or at least nothing more than a few flurries, but I’ve got my hopes up. Sometimes I feel sorry for all those other unenhanced humans who have to go around bundled up in gigantic puffy coats and scarves up to their eyeballs, but I really like it when it’s cold out. It makes me feel better about sitting on the couch under a blanket doing nothing.”

He starts to block out the pose, Tony looking regal in three-quarters profile. He starts the portrait from mid-torso so that he can get the arc reactor into the frame. “I’ve got a problem with relaxing, actually. It’s not that I’ve got too much energy, although that’s definitely its own problem. It’s just… I dunno. I guess I feel like if I’m not doing something useful, I’m wasting my life. I mean, I know that’s not true. I’ve talked to Dr. Castaño about this a lot, actually. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m not doing enough if I sit still for more than five minutes at a time.”

He rummages in his backpack and pulls out his phone, flipping through the photo gallery to find a picture of Tony. He never remembers what his beard looks like; it’s so unnecessarily complicated.

“Fortunately, drawing and reading somehow fit in the box of ‘doing something’, according to my subconscious, so I can usually spend a pretty lazy afternoon on the couch with a sketchbook and not end up feeling too bad about myself.”

He finishes filling in the outline of the beard and then looks at it critically. _I wonder if Tony would notice if I changed the shape_ , he thinks. “Anyway, it’s December and it’s cold and I feel like being cozy. The only thing I’m missing is a fireplace. I could probably get one installed in my house, but it would cost so much money and I’d only be able to use it for a few months out of the year, so I don’t think it’s worth it.”

He lightly sketches the outline of Tony’s fancy sunglasses and then erases it again. “You know, now that it’s December, the Christmas stuff is in full swing. Actually, here in the future, they start the Christmas stuff in earnest the day after Thanksgiving, and you even see some stores selling red and green stuff after Halloween. It’s weird.”

He doodles a little line of Christmas garland, holly and fir, across the bottom of Tony’s sketch. “Christmas is definitely a bigger deal now than it was when we were growing up. I guess that’s ‘cause people have more money to spend, or maybe ‘cause things are cheaper, comparatively speaking, so you can buy more? I dunno, it’s weird and kinda off-putting.”

In the top right corner of the paper he starts to draw a tiny piece of mistletoe, tied at the top with a ribbon. “Tony, of course, throws a huge Christmas party for all of his employees and then another for the bigwigs he rubs shoulders with. There’s some pressure to go to those ones, but I haven’t given in yet and I’m not about to start. But then on Christmas Eve those of us who don’t have any family, which is, I guess, everybody except for Thor, watch Christmas movies at the Tower and then have a big Christmas morning breakfast all together. It’s really nice. It’s a really selfish thing to think, but I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t have a real family. It's the reason why we have this little cobbled-together family. Although, I guess now I do kinda have a real family, and it's you and me. It’s us.”

When he turns his full attention to the paper again, he sees, to his surprise, that he’s drawn a little cartoon Steve in a Cap suit standing under the mistletoe. Alone. _Jesus christ, you sad sack of shit, could you be more pathetic?_ Unbidden, he hears the soft, stern voice of Dr. Castaño in his ear, _Be kinder to yourself, Steve._ He frowns and pulls a pencil with a softer lead out of his pencil case, then scribbles over the tiny Steve until the top corner of Tony’s sketch is just a slick patch of graphite.

“Anyway. Now, in the future, Christmas movies are, like, a whole genre. The last couple of years we’ve watched the same ones, one called _Elf_ about this guy who thinks he’s one of Santa’s elves but he’s actually just a regular person. It’s really funny. And a really, really good one called _It’s a Wonderful Life_ that’s got Jimmy Stewart in it. Remember Jimmy Stewart? Remember when we went to see _The Philadelphia Story_ with him and Katherine Hepburn? God, what a great movie.”

In the bottom right corner of the paper he starts to draw Katherine Hepburn, but she comes out with a Natasha kind of look on her face, like she’s about to eviscerate you, but she’s going to smile while she does it. “Now that I think about it, he was in _Mr. Smith Goes to Washington_ , too. Oh, shit.” He starts laughing, leaning back and clutching at his chest. “I’d forgotten all about that movie. We went to see it in the theater when it came out and I wouldn’t stop talking about it for weeks and weeks afterwards.”

“And… and you finally told me that if I didn’t shut up you were gonna take me down to Washington on the train and leave me on the front steps of the Capitol with a sign around my neck saying ‘free to a good home’.” He slaps his knees, snorting idiotically.

“God, Barnes. I’d forgotten all about that. Anyway. You should watch _It’s a Wonderful Life_. It came out right after the war ended, so it feels really, you know, familiar. And it’s a good movie. It’ll make you cry like a baby, though.”

He finally looks at his watch. “Jesus, I’ve been here for ages. I was gonna run errands before lunch because I have training after, but I think I’m gonna have to put them off 'til tomorrow.”

He slips the sketch of Tony (and Katherine Hepburn) back into its folder and gathers up his pencils. “Not that I mind. If I didn’t have other things to take care of, I’d stay here all day just talking to you. I really enjoy it, you know. It feels… it feels more like writing letters than any other form of modern communication. It’s like what we did back when you were in Europe and I was still bored out of my skull in Brooklyn, before I got the serum. That’s what it reminds me of.”

He shoves everything in his backpack and zips it up. “Well. Anyway. I hope you have a good afternoon and a good night’s sleep. I’ll be back tomorrow, Barnes. Goodbye.”

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, guess what I did yesterday? I bought a Christmas tree!” He feels, for some reason, inordinately proud of himself, like he’s a proper, well-adjusted adult because he’s got a Christmas tree. Not even buying a house or taking down a shady government agency had made him feel so self-satisfied and grown up.

He unzips his backpack and pulls out a pad of lightweight drafting paper and a pair of small, orange-handled scissors. “After we talked about Christmas the other day, I was feeling in kind of a Christmassy mood, I guess. When I got back to Brooklyn, I passed a Christmas tree stand down on Flatbush Avenue near my house and it just felt right to buy one on the spur of the moment, even though I hadn’t thought about buying a tree or decorating for Christmas at all, since I’m gonna be spending the holiday at the Tower.”

He carefully tears a sheet of paper out of the pad and turns the bottom edge up so that it’s flush with the side, pressing the diagonal fold into a crisp crease with his fingernail. “And, anyway, it’s just me at home, so there isn’t really any reason to decorate, you know? It’s not like I’m gonna leave presents under the tree for myself or anything. But there it was, and before I knew it, I was walking up my front steps with a whole goddamn tree over my shoulder.”

He uses the scissors to slice the excess paper off the top and then folds the resulting triangle into thirds, and then in half. “I gotta say, even if I feel kinda silly for going to such trouble, it really is nice. It doesn’t have any ornaments on it yet because I haven’t had time to buy them, but it’s already made the whole house smell so wonderful, and it makes the living room look smaller and cozier.”

Now that he’s got a proper isosceles triangle, he starts snipping at it with the scissors, slouching down a little bit by the door and pulling the hem of his hoodie out so that it makes a hammock to catch the scraps that flutter down. “I have to buy some lights, but I’m gonna try to make most of the ornaments. I don’t really like the ones they sell in the stores, they’re either too boring or too gaudy.”

He uses the inside of the blade to cut a curve into the side of the cone, then uses the tips of his little fingers to open the resulting scrap of paper to check that it does, indeed, make a heart. “I think people with families have a lot of mismatched ornaments that they collect over the years. Or Sam’s family does, at least. But since it’s just me, I haven’t had any reason to start doing something like that.”

“So I’m gonna cut some snowflakes. That’s what I’m doing right now, actually, instead of sketching. You can probably hear my scissors.” He holds them up to the door and snips the blades a few times, _snick snick_ , before going back to making confetti out of his paper triangle. “And I’ll make a garland out of colored paper, nothing different than we would have done back before the war. If we had ever been able to afford a Christmas tree, of course.”

He thinks for a moment back to their Christmases past; they’d never had a Christmas tree, not when he was a kid, not when he and Barnes had lived together. Some years, one or the other of them would scrounge up some scraps of greenery, a twig or two if they were lucky, from the Christmas tree lots in the better parts of Brooklyn. One memorable year, they had a whole branch, like a miniature, lopsided tree itself.

“Hey,” he says, finally laying down his scissors and unfolding the snowflake, smoothing it against his thigh with his palm. It’s better than he had expected, given that he hasn’t done this for seventy years, although the hearts are blocky and there isn’t enough detail. He lays it to the side and tears another sheet of paper out of the pad.

“Sorry. Got distracted. Anyway, I was just thinking about this one Christmas, don’t know if you remember it or not, it was the Christmas after my ma died. And we were both broke as hell, you were working two jobs, and I was taking lettering commissions and trying to make rent and still have enough to eat. So, we didn’t have anything left over for Christmas decorations or even presents, not really.” There _had_ been presents, though. Of course. The triangle folds in on itself, once-twice-thrice, edges creased to a satisfying sharpness. He picks up his scissors and starts to snip delicate little icicles out of the side.

On Christmas morning, Barnes– _Bucky?_ – Bucky had presented him with a bundle of roughly-knit red wool that looked like the leg parts of a pair of socks, until Steve looked closer and saw that each one had a hole halfway down; they were like gloves, but without the fingers, to wear over his hands and wrists to keep them warm while he was drawing. Bucky had bought the wool, and Becca had knit them up. “It’s… it’s not much,” he had stammered, “but, uh, since we can’t hardly afford to have much heat in here, and I know how cold your hands are all the time, I just thought that, uh…” Steve, grinning hugely, had taken pity on his flustered face and said, “Thanks, Buck, it’s a great present,” and had immediately pulled them on.

Steve himself had given Bucky two drawings, charcoal on the most expensive paper he could get for a couple of pennies. One was a portrait of his family: Bucky, his parents, and his two sisters. The other was a portrait of Bucky’s girl, Dottie, the one he’d been going steady with for a few months.

Steve remembers vividly how Bucky had stared at the portrait of Dottie, a muscle in his cheek jumping as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. At the time, Steve had thought that it was affection for Dottie that was causing the transparent play of emotions over his open face. But later, when Bucky found out that Dottie had been going around with another guy, he dropped her cheerfully enough that it made Steve think back to that Christmas morning and wonder exactly what he had seen there.

His second snowflake is almost done when he realizes that he’s been wandering silently through the past in his own head again. “Oops, sorry, Barnes. Got distracted again. Anyway, so I was saying that the Christmas after my ma died, I guess I wasn’t feeling too great because you took it upon yourself to cheer up the house a little bit. One day right before Christmas I was sitting at the table drawing when you came busting through the door all red and sweaty, looking like the devil himself was chasing you.” He can picture Bucky perfectly, his dark wool overcoat hanging open, his face red, and his carefully combed-back hair falling wild over his forehead.

“I got kinda scared because I thought that maybe you’d been in a fight or something and somebody was chasing you, but then you pulled your hand out from behind you back and shoved this tree branch in my face and said, ‘I got us a tree, Stevie!’” It’s a nice memory– more than nice, actually. It’s a beloved memory, one that warms his chest and makes him grin every time he thinks of it, though he can’t say why. Maybe it’s the memory of Bucky’s beaming face, expectant and happy, happy because he knows that he’s about to make Steve happy, too.

“I was just a little thing, probably only two feet long, but when we stood it up on the table in a drinking glass it made a good enough tree. We cut some Sunday comics pages into strips for tinsel and made a little garland before I thought to ask you where you’d got it from. Turns out you’d cut it off a tree in Greenwood Cemetery, and I was so mad I almost made you take it back. I dunno what I thought you were gonna do, stick it back to the tree with paste or something.” He laughs at himself, the past self who was such a stickler for doing what was right. His present self is also a stickler, but he’s more discerning, and he knows now that the dead wouldn’t begrudge anybody a bit of Christmas cheer. “I got off my high horse pretty quick, though, because it was so nice to have a little greenery in the house.”

The last snowflake is almost perfect, lacy and delicate. He feels the glow of self-satisfaction and wishes immediately that he could show it to Barnes, slip it under the door or something, but the bottom of the door is flush with the floor, possibly even airtight.

“Well, while I’ve been yammering, I made a couple of snowflakes and the last one turned out really good, so I think that’s my cue. I’m gonna go home and watch TV and cut more snowflakes, maybe get started on the garland if I have enough time.”

He slides the pad of paper and the scissors back into his backpack and stands up awkwardly, holding the hem of his hoodie flush with his stomach so that the paper scraps are trapped in the pouch. “I’ve gotta find somewhere to dump all this confetti first, though. I hope you have a good rest of your day. Sleep well, I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodbye, Barnes.”

* * *

He finally reschedules his meeting with Dr. Zaidi for after the next weekend. “So,” she says, when he’s settled himself in the leather armchair with his hands crossed comfortably over his stomach. “Last time, we talked about Barnes’s progress and the possibility that SHIELD will release him into your custody sometime soon. Or soonish.”

“Yeah, that’s great!” Steve tries to temper his grin, turn it into something merely happy rather than wildly ecstatic, but he’s only partially successful.

Dr. Zaidi gives him an eye-crinkling smile in return. “Well, we need to talk some about what to expect, and keep in mind that this could change between now and when he’s released.”

Steve leans forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees. “Right now,” she continues, “he’s verbal but not expressive. I wouldn’t say that he’s withdrawn, not exactly, but he hardly communicates beyond giving one-word answers to questions. He conveys his needs in a way that leaves no doubt that he’s in full possession of his faculties, but doesn’t say much beyond what’s strictly necessary. Sometimes in sessions with me, he seems to loosen up, like he’s struck a vein of conversation, and when he’s more voluble he’s very articulate and well-spoken. But it’s not often that I see that kind of expressiveness from him. In fact, when he first came in, there were many days that he had unresponsive periods. He wasn’t ill or hurt, but he wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even me, or acknowledge when someone was talking to him.”

“I’ve never seen him unresponsive,” Steve says, furrowing his brow. “Or, I mean, he always comes to the door when I’m there. And as much as I can tell, he always seems to be listening to me, it's not like he’s catatonic. Sometimes it takes a little longer for him to come to the door, but he always gets there.”

“I’m sure you’re right, and that could be due to luck. You come every day, but you usually don’t stay for hours on end, so maybe it’s just that your visits have never coincided with his worst moments. However, I might also hypothesize that the connection he feels with you might be enough to pull him out of an unresponsive period, when he’s having a bad day, or at least enough to draw him to the door to listen to you talk.”

Steve feels a warmth spread through and through him, like the feeling of drinking something hot after a long walk in cold weather.

“As he hasn’t consented to any sort of testing, we have no idea what kind of neurological problems he may have or how far they’ve repaired themselves since he escaped from Hydra. And, as I said, he’s quite articulate when he’s having a good day. So I believe his uncommunicativeness is mere reticence, and his unresponsive periods are dissociation or something similar, not a physical aftereffect of the traumatic brain injuries that were inflicted on him by Hydra.” Steve blinks, trying to parse the last sentence. Dr. Zaidi grins at him and says, “In short, if he’s not talking it is probably because he just doesn’t feel quite up to it. But I’m very confident, actually, that when he gets out of SHIELD, which, I have to admit, is not an environment conducive to candid conversation and open interpersonal relationships, he will open up. Bloom, as it were.”

“I certainly hope so,” Steve says eagerly. “He was always a talker, before the war.” Dr. Zaidi draws a breath to speak, but Steve holds up a hand and cuts her off. “Sorry, not that I’m waiting for him to turn into the person that I knew back in Brooklyn in the 30s. I know that that’s never going to happen, and it’s not something I’m waiting for. I’m not even sure that it’s something I’d want, to be honest. I’m not the same person I used to be, either.” She tilts her head, conceding his point. “I just mean that he’s had the capacity to be pretty wordy in the past, so I wouldn’t be surprised, myself, if some of that comes back.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you, Captain Rogers. Now, apart from the issues with communication, he’s also been quite solitary. He’s not being purposefully kept in solitary confinement, of course, that would be extremely harmful to his recovery, but the nature of his situation means that he doesn’t have any interaction with anyone who might be considered a peer, other than yourself. We have made some forays into social integration, but anything other than carefully scripted one-on-one interaction is overwhelming for him. He sees me on a daily basis, and he has a doctor who gives him as much of a check-up as he’s comfortable with on weekly basis, and he has a personal trainer who sees him in the gym two or three times a week, but that’s it.”

“I didn’t know about the doctor or the personal trainer,” Steve says, taken aback.

“Well, you wouldn’t,” Dr. Zaidi says, a little apologetically. “You’ve been, I’m sorry to say, somewhat deliberately kept in the dark. Or,” she continues, with a considering little head bobble, “in the twilight. I’ve said this before, but I would have liked to bring you on board from the beginning, but my hands were tied. I’ve been allowed to give you some information, but on a need-to-know basis only, and nothing that would invite your interference.” She adds a sarcastic flip to the last word. “Now that the possibility of releasing Barnes into your custody is on the table, you obviously need to be brought up to speed, so I’m giving you all of this information on the strength of my, let’s say, professional judgement.”

Steve would swear that she almost winks at him, if it weren’t so out-of-character. He suspects, though, that what he’s seen of Dr. Zaidi’s character is only the tip of the iceberg.

“Anyway,” she says, smoothing her hands over the sheaf of papers on her desktop, “he’s been working with a trainer-slash-physical therapist in the gym twice a week since the week after he arrived. When he first came in, he was malnourished and dehydrated, but not weak. Or,” she says, hesitating, “rather, I should say that we have no idea how weak he was because we have no baseline to compare it to. I know, based on what bits of his file that Fury has released to me, that he was given something comparable to your serum.”

Steve nods, his lips compressed into a thin line. He’s read that file from cover to cover, dozens of times, in varying states of self-flagellation, curiosity, and despair. Dr. Zaidi continues, “However, Barnes has been very careful to not display the full extent of his enhancements. We really have no idea how his strength, speed, or agility compare to yours, or even if he may surpass you in some respects.”

Steve swallows, his throat clicking audibly. The two fights with Barnes, on the bridge and on the helicarrier, are as real to Steve now as if they’d happened yesterday. He can still smell the burning cars, feel his cheekbone crack under that implacable metal fist, and hear that flat, dead voice saying, “Who the hell is Bucky?” Steve closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it out again slowly. When he opens his eyes again, Dr. Zaidi is looking at him thoughtfully. “I had forgotten that you’ve fought him. You have, then, a better idea of the extent of his enhancements.”

“I do,” Steve says. “I’ve only fought him twice, but I think we’re a pretty even match.”

“I knew we should have made you part of the process,” she says, shaking her head. “But it doesn’t matter much, now.” She waves her hands as if to clear the air and folds them together on the desktop. “But to get back to what I was saying, he’s been working with the physical therapist to keep up the muscle mass he needs in order for his body to support his arm. That’s going to be something that you will need to oversee when he’s released to you, at least until he’s capable of doing it himself. The SHIELD gymnasium will always be open to him, of course, and his physical therapist is available to help him. But we’re not going to make training here a condition of his release. If you can get him to go to a gym near your house, or even provide him with some basic equipment to use at home, that should be enough.”

She looks at Steve to make sure he’s getting all of this information, and he nods. “No problem. I train at the gym at the Tower, but I can get some weights and a pull-up bar and stuff like that to have at home if he’d prefer that.”

“Well, I also told you that he’s been seeing a doctor. She’s not actually a doctor; he categorically refused to see a doctor, or even be in the same room as one when he first came in, so we called in a nutritionist with nursing training. Like I said, he was malnourished and dehydrated at the beginning, and we know that he wasn’t feeding himself properly after he broke away from Hydra, but we’re not sure why. It could be because he didn’t have the resources to feed himself, or that he didn’t know what his body would tolerate. I know you’ve seen the file,”– here Steve nods tersely– “so you know that they fed him nutrient pastes and protein powder. Things that would give him the energy to complete his mission, but which can hardly be dignified with the name ‘food.’”

Steve has got his teeth clenched so hard that he can feel the muscle jumping in his jaw. Dr. Zaidi is frowning severely, but she gives a little sigh and her expression clears. “It was difficult to find things that he would tolerate, at first, and that didn’t make him sick, but I’m happy to say that he’s eating almost normally again. Or, I should say, as close to normal as we can suppose without any testing data to compare with. I don’t think food will be a problem once he’s released, though, as long as you’re making sure that he’s eating enough.”

“If he’s got the serum same as me, then I guess he probably needs to eat as much as I do, so I can just stick to that as a general rule. I mean, assume that if I’m hungry, he’s probably hungry too.”

“That sounds perfect. Now, like I said before, we’ve made some forays into social integration in the last month. Specifically, I invited him to accompany me to the employee cafeteria for a mid-morning coffee, a time when there’s guaranteed to be some people around having a break, but without the full press of lunchtime.”

Steve leans forward in his chair a little more. Dr. Zaidi seems, strangely, a little embarrassed. Just a tiny bit. But he can see it in her eyes.

“It was not, I should say, a total disaster, but it was certainly not a success. He was uncomfortable as soon as we got into the lift, and only withdrew more the further we got from this floor and the more people we passed in the hallways. We didn’t even get into the cafeteria. We’ve made a few more attempts since then and he’s gotten as far as sitting down at a table, but nothing more.”

“I’m afraid,” she says, looking downright chagrined, “that his confinement, necessary or not, has not helped the social facet of his rehabilitation, and may have even made it worse. He was, in a sense, reborn that day in April when he first broke his programming, and he has spent all this time, both outside and in here, learning to be a person again. In this aspect, he may have lost some ground since he came in, unfortunately.”

Steve gives her a small, rueful smile and shrugs. “Like you said, your hands were tied.” She hums uncertainly, but he continues, “What matters is that now he’s gonna come home with me and he’s gonna have a lot more social interaction all of a sudden. How do I handle that?”

“Well, the best thing you can do is give him his own space and let him control the amount of interaction he has.”

Steve waves his hand dismissively. “Oh, that’s no problem. I’ve got a spare bedroom that’ll be his, and since I’m gonna be on a leave of absence, I’m planning to just stick around the house and do what I usually do on the weekends. You know, read, cook, watch TV, paint. Stuff like that. So if he wants to come out and interact, that’s great, and if he doesn’t, that’s great too.”

“Perfect,” Dr. Zaidi says, giving him a brilliant smile. “Honestly, Captain Rogers, I’m very happy with Fury’s decision to release him to you. I think with your patience and kindness and affection for him, you’ll be able to help him in this regard far more than we have in the last few months with a whole team of professionals.”

Steve can feel himself pinking up at the praise. “Well,” he says, looking down at his sneakers. “I’d do literally anything in my power to help him.”

“If only we were all so lucky,” Dr. Zaidi says softly, almost to herself. A moment passes, then she clears her throat and says, “Well. One last bit of news.”

Steve looks up quickly. She sweeps her hand across the stack of papers on the desk and says, “All of this is paperwork for you to read and sign in order to make the custody hand-off official. Take it home and look through it, but I’ll need it back by the end of the week. What with Christmas and New Year’s coming up, I’ll need all the time I can get to have everything checked and double-checked and filed and all in order, so that, per Director Fury’s official decree, Barnes can go home with you the first week of January.”

Steve’s feels himself gaping stupidly, wonderfully. “So soon?? That’s fantastic news! I wasn’t expecting him to be released until the spring, at the earliest!”

Dr. Zaidi looks sheepish. “Yes, I know. I’m afraid I may have let you believe that when I knew it would probably happen sooner, but I wanted to be sure that everything was set in stone before I told you.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I totally understand. It’s a wonderful surprise, though, like Christmas come early.”

“You’re not too far off, Captain Rogers,” she says with a laugh. “Christmas is only ten days away.” She pushes the stack of papers across the desk and Steve flips through them briefly before unzipping his backpack and tucking them between the pages of his sketchbook.

“Are you doing anything for Christmas?” Steve asks as he’s zipping his backpack up again.

Dr. Zaidi cocks an eyebrow at him. “Oh no, I, personally, don’t celebrate Christmas.” She waves a hand vaguely in the direction of her hijab.

Steve slaps his forehead. “Oh jeez, I’m sorry, I didn’t even think, of course you don’t,” he says, flustered.

Dr. Zaidi laughs at him, not unkindly. “It’s quite alright, I actually am taking the 25th off because my brother’s family does a very bastardized version of Christmas. My nieces are American through and through and would be heartbroken if they didn’t get a few presents, like their school friends do. We usually make a big lunch and I spend the day with them putting together Lego sets.”

Steve asks, “So, you’re going to be here on the 24th, then?” When she nods, he continues, “I actually have a… uh… a present for Barnes. Of sorts. Can I leave it with you? Could you give it to him before you leave?”

“Oh, of course,” she exclaims. “But, necessarily, I have to ask, what is it?”

Steve feels embarrassed. It’s nothing, really, and it feels silly telling someone else about it. Now that he has to say it out loud, he’s starting to second-guess the idea. It’s not like it’s even a real present. “It’s, uh, it’s just a sketchbook. The one I’ve been working on when I sit and talk to him. Pictures of things from when we were kids, to help him remember, I guess. And things from nowadays, whatever catches my eye. It’s nothing, just something I thought maybe he’d like to see.”

Dr. Zaidi face softens. “It’s not nothing. That’s a lovely, thoughtful present, Captain Rogers, and I’m sure he will cherish it.”

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, I hope you’ve had a good morning. I, uh, I haven’t said anything about this yet because I wanted to think about it a little bit, but I had a real long talk with Dr. Zaidi on Monday and she told me that things are really moving forward now and that they’re gonna release you after the first of the year, which is, I gotta say… I mean…”

He blows a big breath out through his lips and pulls off the knit hat he’s still wearing so that he can run his hands through his hair, one after the other. It probably looks like a falling-down haystack now, but he doesn’t care; he’s just going to pull the hat back on when he leaves.

“What I want to say first is that I’m really proud of you. Really, really proud. You have no idea. You’ve… you’ve been through so much. And to come out of that, to break your programming, to… to get better…” He has to swallow around the sudden lump in his throat, hoping that the quaver he feels in his heart isn’t going to show in his voice. Suddenly, in the silence, he’s aware of a hitch in Barnes’s breathing, in contrast to the quiet, steady pulse of his heartbeat. Steve leans his head against the door with a soft bump and spreads his left hand out on the dark wood next to his face. The lump is back in his throat and he has to swallow a few more times before he trusts himself to speak.

“So, yeah. I’m really proud of you. And I’m gonna help you keep getting better or… or just whatever you need. I want you to know that you can count on me for anything. For everything. Once upon a time, you were my best friend, and I still think of us as best friends, now. I don’t know if you remember this, but I’m… I’m with you till the end of the line, pal.”

God, he’s gonna start crying if he doesn’t get ahold of himself. _When did I become such a fucking crybaby? I haven’t cried this much since... the train. In the Alps. I guess it’s just something about Bucky?_

__

__

_Barnes. About Barnes._

He pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out, carrying some of his tension with it. Takes another one, holds it, lets it out. Clears his throat.

“So, anyway. I’ve got the spare bedroom at my house all set up for you. I remember the kinds of things you liked to eat before the war, but I don’t know what you like now, and anyway, the food that we ate before the war was pretty bad compared to what’s on offer these days. I can cook alright, like I’ve said, and there are dozens of take-out places in the neighborhood, so we can just cross that bridge when we come to it. I’m pretty sure I can keep you well fed.” He huffs out a laugh.

“Um… what else?” He taps his bottom lip with his forefinger. His mind has gone suddenly blank. “Oh yeah, that’s right. Uh, I don’t know if Dr. Zaidi’s told you, but I’m gonna take a leave of absence, January through mid-April. Already talked to Fury about it. Or, rather, he called me last week at seven a.m. and told me that I was ordered to take three months’ leave and hung up before I could get a word in. So I’ll be home all the time, or, at least, I won’t have to be gone on missions or anything. Dr. Zaidi said that we should establish a routine as soon as we can. But, uh, I guess that’s another bridge we can cross when we get to it.”

“I’m… I’m really excited. To share a house with you again. And, honestly, a little nervous. Not because of you, not at all, but because it’s been years since I’ve lived with anyone on a permanent basis. I mean, you were the last, back in Brooklyn. I lived with Sam for a while in DC, but I was definitely a guest, it wasn’t my house.”

He spins his hat around on his finger until it flies off and hits the door with a soft thump. “Not that I’m expecting this to be like it was back in Brooklyn, before the war. I wanna be really clear on that. I know… I know you don’t remember a lot. And I don’t want you to feel like you have to be somebody you’re not just because I remember more than you do. I don’t want that. At all. I’ve… you know, I’ve changed a lot too. In a different way, of course, but anymore I’m only half that little guy from Brooklyn who was too bullheaded to stay out of fights.”

He picks the hat up by the pom-pom and twirls it around like a whirligig. “It’s kind of hard to say who I am nowadays, really. That’s something I’m working on with Dr. Castaño. But at any rate, we’re both gonna have to get to know each other again, and that’s okay. I’m just worried that I’ve turned into a slob and I’m gonna forget not to leave dirty socks and half-drunk cups of coffee all over the house.”

The hat suddenly separates from the pom-pom and flies halfway down the hall. Steve is left looking at the pom-pom clutched in his hand. “Oh shit, I just broke the pom-pom off my hat. Goddammit, this is exactly why I need my sketchbook. Shit.” He gets up and retrieves the hat and sits back down by the door again with a huff. “It should be easy to fix, though.”

“Anyway, I gotta go. I’ve got a meeting with Pepper and the other Avengers to talk about next year’s charity events, but I still haven’t told them that I’m gonna be out of uniform for three months. I’m a little nervous, actually, but I don’t think they’ll take it too badly. And anyway, Fury’s already approved it, so it doesn’t matter.”

He stands up, pulling on what’s left of his hat and stuffing the pom-pom into the pocket of his bomber. “I hope the rest of your day goes well and I hope you get a good night’s sleep. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Goodbye, Barnes.”

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, merry Christmas Eve! It is honest-to-god snowing outside right now. I can’t remember the last time there was snow on Christmas, definitely not since I got to the future. Maybe once or twice when we were kids there was a nice snowfall, but mostly I just remember the slush and ice that seeped in through the cracks in my shoes, nothing like it looks like outside right now. I mean, as soon as it stops snowing it’ll turn into ice and slush again, but it’s beautiful while it lasts, and it’s really nice that it’s coming down today.”

Steve unzips his backpack and pulls out his sketchbook, the leather-bound one that he’s been carrying around since September. Its previously-pristine cover is scuffed, the stitching around the corners frayed, and the edges of the pages foxed and smudged. It looks exactly like it’s been hanging around in his backpack for four months.

“I’ve, uh, I got you something for Christmas. Well. I didn’t get it for you. I made it.”

He fans the pages of the sketchbook under his thumb, but stops short when the realizes that Barnes can hear him through the door.

“Uh, I hope you didn’t hear that ‘cause I don’t want to give away the secret. It’s nothing special, though. Just… just something I thought you might like.”

He silently flips back to the beginning to look again at that first portrait he’d drawn, all the way back in September. It’s Barnes– Bucky– as a teenager, or maybe a little older, his soft face padded with the baby fat that he’d kept until the European theater beat the lingering traces of adolescence out of him. Steve had drawn him from the shoulders up, in three-quarters profile, his head tipped back slightly so that the tendons in his slim neck are drawn taut under the skin. He’s looking sidelong at the viewer, his eyelashes a dark smudge, and the delicate curve of the corner of his mouth is drawn up in an enigmatic smirk. Although he was a devotee of hats, Steve had drawn him bareheaded, his overlong hair hanging in soft waves to the tip of his ear. The unbuttoned collar of his shirt is visible, but around his shoulders lies a mantle of flowers: white lilacs, pink foxgloves, and purple irises with their half-hidden, pollen-colored tongues. The rest of the portrait is done in pencil, black and white, but the flowers are carefully tinted with watercolors.

“I didn’t wrap it, sorry about that. I really wanted to so that it’d look like a proper present, but I didn’t actually remember to until I got here, and then it was too late.”

He flips through the book some more, turning the pages silently with the pad of his thumb. There are pictures of the Barnes family, of the house they had shared before the war, of the Howling Commandos. There are dozens of drawings of Steve and Bucky together as kids, as teenagers, as young men looking incongruously happy in the midst of war, but always together, side-by-side. There are pictures of the future, of the greenhouse in Steve’s overgrown backyard, of his front steps with the motorcycle parked in his tiny front yard. There are doodles, like the dancing kohlrabi, and one picture of the other Avengers that he’s not sure Barnes will appreciate, but he really loves it. They’re all crowded on the overstuffed couch that sits in front of the gigantic TV in their common area, Thor, Clint, Tony, and Natasha with video game controllers in their hands, each one looking angry, competitive, ecstatic, or chagrined, as the case may be. Bruce is leaning over the back of the couch, pointing at something on the screen, laughing and carefree.

On the very last page is another portrait, but this one is taken directly from the picture of Barnes that Dr. Zaidi had made for him all those months ago. It’s Barnes as he is now, hair long and dark, his jaw heavily stubbled but strong. The dimple in his chin is not hidden, but rather highlighted by a day’s growth of beard. It had taken Steve a long time to get the eyes right, and he’s still not sure that he’s really finished with them, although it’s too late now. Barnes looks less knowing than his teenaged portrait, more open and vulnerable. There’s no secret joke hidden behind his smile, only the things that Steve had seen in the original photograph: defiance, apprehension, and hope. Steve had thought about giving him another mantle of flowers, but it didn’t seem right. Instead, this Barnes has a starburst behind his head, a shining halo picked out in gold paint, looking like some dark-haired renaissance pietà.

Each drawing has a notation on the back in Steve’s careful handwriting, a short description of time and place. It’s quite a body of work, certainly the most he’s done since he came out of the ice, and he hopes that Barnes will like it. All of a sudden, he hears him shift on the other side of the door, and he realizes that he had stopped talking altogether some minutes ago. “Oh, shit, sorry Barnes, I was just thinking and I forgot to keep running my mouth.” He laughs sheepishly. “So, yeah. I’m gonna drop your present off with Dr. Zaidi when I go, and she’ll give it to you later today.”

“I’m not going home after this, I’m gonna go straight to the Tower because we’re starting our Christmas movie marathon at lunch. We each get to choose a movie this year, so I picked _It’s a Wonderful Life_ , the one that I was telling you about a few weeks ago. Tony picked _A Charlie Brown Christmas_ , whatever that is, and Clint picked something called _Love, Actually_ , which doesn’t sound like a Christmas movie at all.”

He turns the sketchbook over again in his hands, smoothing his palm down the worn leather spine. “I wish you could spend Christmas with us. It’s a lot of fun, and I think you’d have a really good time. Or really, I just wish that you didn’t have to spend Christmas here at all, that you could do whatever you wanted, even if you just wanted to be at home with me. Or by yourself.”

His heart gives a little twinge. It’s not sadness, not really, but a little bit of longing for something he can’t quite name. Nostalgia, maybe. “There’s always next year, though, when you’ll be able to do whatever you want.”

He huffs a little sigh and zips up his bag, tucking the sketchbook under his arm and climbing to his feet. “Alright, I need to get to the Tower to help get the food and stuff ready. I’ll be back tomorrow morning to wish you a very merry Christmas, but in the meantime, I hope you have a good Christmas Eve and a good night’s sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow, Barnes. Goodbye.”

* * *

The Monday after Christmas, Steve’s phone rings at quarter to eight, right as he’s getting out of the shower. “Hello?”

“Cap, be in my office at nine-thirty.”

“Fury?”

“No, it’s Santa Claus.”

Steve laughs in spite of the annoyance he feels. “I’ve got training at nine, but I can come by afterwards.”

“No, you can cancel your training ‘cause you’ve got me at nine-thirty.”

Steve opens his mouth to protest, but Fury’s already cut the line.

When he gets in the elevator at SHIELD headquarters, he hesitates for a moment in front of the control panel. He feels the pull of the level 3 subbasement like a weak magnet, a little flutter in his stomach like day-old champagne. He’d much rather go downstairs and visit Barnes than go upstairs and face whatever Fury’s got for him, and he almost does. Fury’s not his superior, not exactly, so he could be late for their meeting without getting fired or sent to a black site or whatever it is that you do with recalcitrant superheroes. But he’d rather not antagonize Fury, especially not since he holds the keys to Barnes’s freedom. So he pushes the button for the tenth floor and leans back against the wall of the elevator with a sigh.

“Cap,” Fury says without looking up from his desk when Steve walks in through his office door. “Right on time. Sit down.”

Steve lowers himself gingerly into the low-slung leather-and-chrome chair in front of the desk. It creaks in protest, and he tries to think weightless thoughts while his knees are sitting level with his nipples. It’s such a fuck-off chair to having sitting in front of the director’s desk that he almost starts laughing, but Fury interrupts his train of thought.

“So, Cap, I take it that the good doctor has filled you in on Barnes and the fact that you’re going to be taking him home on Friday?”

“ _Friday??_ ” Steve says, his voice going squeaky in his surprise.

Fury cocks his one visible eyebrow.

“I mean,” Steve starts, trying to recover his composure, “Dr. Zaidi said the first week of January.”

“The first week of January starts on Thursday,” Fury says, unimpressed. “You coming unstuck in time?”

“No, no,” Steve says, shaking his head. “I was just expecting it to be more like the 7th than the 1st.”

“Friday is the 2nd,” Fury says flatly. “I suggest you get a calendar or something, Cap.” He pulls a sleek, black phone out of the inside pocket of his leather duster. “These things here have calendars on them, and you can carry them around with you everywhere. You should get one.”

Steve purses his lips. “I’ve got one. What did you call me here for, Fury?”

He gets an enigmatic stare in return, but he waits silently for Fury to throw him a bone. Eventually, Fury says, “You know what you’re signing up for, right?”

Steve feels his hackles rise automatically. “What do you mean, what I’m signing up for?”

“I mean,” Fury says, leaning over his desk and fixing Steve with a piercing stare, “We’re about to release into your custody the world’s foremost assassin, a man with an unrivaled kill count, an impeccably trained and preternaturally resourceful murderer…”

“He’s not a murderer!” Steve shouts, just barely stopping himself from smashing his fist down on the desktop.

“…who evaded capture by all the most powerful government agencies in the world for decades,” Fury continues right over Steve’s outburst, raising his voice to be heard, “who almost killed you twice, and who would have if it hadn’t been for the glitch in his programming. Are you sure, absolutely sure, that you know what you’re getting yourself into here, Cap?”

“Yes, I know exactly what I’m getting into,” Steve grits out between clenched teeth. “I’m helping out a friend who’s in a bad situation. I’m giving him a home, and I’m giving him the support he needs, and I’m gonna help him get back on his feet.”

Fury doesn’t say anything, just looks at him critically.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Steve spits out, “if you’re so concerned about this, why are you letting him go so soon? Why isn’t he at a black site? Why haven’t you just had him disappeared?”

“Because we know you’d pitch a snit fit if anything happened to your best friend, Bucky Barnes,” Fury says, almost sneering. “So if you’re not gonna let me do the job right, the next best thing is to make it your problem.”

“But,” he continues, leaning back in his chair, his demeanor changing immediately to that of a long-suffering martyr, “I didn’t bring you here to argue. Assuming you know what you’re getting into, and I’ve got your signature saying you do ‘cause you’ve signed papers to that effect, we just need to go over a few pesky little details.”

Steve crosses his arms and leans back in his chair.

“First, there’s the little matter of how Barnes has refused any and all testing since he’s been with us, and Zaidi refuses to administer testing without his consent.” It’s obvious from his tone of voice what he thinks of this mild insubordination. “So, I will be asking you at some unspecified point in the future to bring him back into SHIELD so that we can run some tests on him, take a few samples, that kind of thing.”

“And if he never wants to come back?”

“I’ll leave it up to you to convince him,” Fury says, waving his hand dismissively. “Now, I have, after _much_ negotiation with the rest of the panel, and using your extreme dislike of any kind of oversight and your reputation as the worst contrarian motherfucker in America as an excuse, managed to waive the mandatory surveillance and protection detail that was going to be set up on your block.”

Steve takes a deep breath, feeling the anger bubble up inside him again like magma in a volcano’s throat, but Fury holds up a hand. “Cap, I don’t have time for your self-righteous bullshit. Just take it at face value and be grateful, no bugs, no tails, no spooks watching you from the house across the street. But the minute, the _second_ that we have even the smallest insinuation that Barnes has slipped his leash and gone to ground, or that he’s even looked at a civilian cross-eyed, he’ll be back here, or, as you’ve so helpfully suggested, just plain disappeared.”

Steve slouches even lower in the chair, teeth worrying his bottom lip angrily.

“So I really hope you know what you’re doing, Cap, because after he walks out that door on Friday, the responsibility is all yours, and there will be no second chances.”

Steve lets the silence stretch out between them, but Fury is still waiting expectantly, so he finally mutters, “Understood.”

“Now, I’ve got more pressing shit to do on Friday than hold Barnes’s hand as he walks out the front door, so here’s what you’re gonna do. You come in on Friday morning, you talk to Zaidi, and then you take your boy home.” Steve looks up quickly, startled at the wording, and just barely catches the end of an uncharacteristically softer expression on Fury’s face before it closes down again to something hard and caustic.

“Okay,” he says, feeling a little wrongfooted. “I guess, then… I guess I should say thanks. For everything. For having a little, uh, a little faith. In him, but in me, too.”

“Don’t mention it,” Fury says dismissively and begins shuffling papers around on his desk.

Steve can tell when he’s dismissed. He stands up and heads for the door, but pauses with his hand on the knob. “I… uh… I’ll see you later.”

Fury gives him a look and the barest hint of a smile before he motions Steve out the door.

* * *

“Hey, Dr. Zaidi, happy New Year!”

She looks up from her desk and gives Steve, who’s got his head poked around the door, a wide grin. “It’s not the New Year quite yet, you know.”

“Yeah, but I doubt you’ll be in tomorrow, and I know I won’t. In the morning, we’ve got this charity thing that Pepper sets up every January 1st, where we go and visit kids in the pediatric ward at Mt. Sinai. And I’ve still got some things to take care of at home. I wanna make sure everything is ready for Friday, so tomorrow I’m not going to come visit Barnes. I think he’ll understand.”

“I’m sure he will,” Dr. Zaidi says. “He does grumble sometimes about you coming every day to see him.”

Steve’s face falls, and Dr. Zaidi immediately looks chagrined. “Oh no, Captain Rogers, not like that! He loves that you come every day, your visits are extremely important to him. When I said that he grumbled, I meant that he doesn’t think he deserves it. He grumbles about how selfless and good you are,” she says, emphasizing the word _good_ in a way that lets Steve know that those are Barnes’s own words, “and about how you’re here rather than doing something more important.”

He huffs a sad little laugh through his nose, shifting from one foot to the other in the doorway. “I guess it’s gonna take some work to convince him that he really does deserve it?”

“Yes, because recovery is not linear. But that’s what we’re here for, both of us.” She looks at him meaningfully, but he’s not really sure he understands what she’s trying to get at.

“Is there… is there anything specific I should do? I mean, to convince him that he does deserve it. All of it.”

“Just be yourself, Captain Rogers. He’s not the person he was when you knew him before the war, but he needs you to be the person that you were to him, then. Do you understand?”

He doesn’t really, there’s some other nuance to this conversation that he’s missing. But he says anyway, “I… I think so.”

She gives him a warm smile. “Good.” But as he turns to head down the hall to Barnes’s door, she says, “Wait a moment, I wanted to tell you that Barnes showed me the sketchbook that you gave him for Christmas. I hope that was alright?”

Steve rubs the back of his neck, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “Oh! Yeah, yeah, that’s fine.”

“Good,” Dr. Zaidi says emphatically, “because I was absolutely blown away by your drawings. I had no idea you were so talented!”

“Oh jeez,” Steve says, hiding his hot face in his hands and laughing sheepishly. “Thanks, Dr. Zaidi, that means a lot.”

“You’re quite welcome. You know, I was especially impressed by your portraits of Barnes. The portrait of him when he was younger is so expressive that I could almost hear his smirk through the page. And the portrait of him now is perfect. I don’t know how you managed to capture his character so well working from a single photograph, but it was brilliant. Just brilliant.”

Steve looks down at his shoes and smiles. He knows his face is bright red, but he doesn’t really care. “Thanks a lot, Dr. Zaidi. I just hoped he liked the sketchbook as much as you did.”

“Oh, Captain Rogers,” she says, almost chidingly. “How could you think that he wouldn’t? I gave it to him on Christmas Eve, and when I saw him again on the 26th, he could hardly wait to show it to me. We went through the whole thing several times, talking about each picture, and he was overcome with emotion from start to finish.”

Steve himself feels the telltale prickle of tears behind his eyelids. “That’s… that’s great,” he says, a little roughly. “Well, uh, I’d better go.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder.

“I’ve kept you long enough, anyway,” Dr. Zaidi says with a warm smile. “I might not see you on Friday, by the way. Fury, in his infinite wisdom,”– she rolls her eyes and Steve laughs, a joke just for him– “has me scheduled for a meeting at nine o’clock. But there's really nothing more to go over, so it's not a big problem. I’ll make sure that Barnes will be here waiting in my office when you arrive, and if you don’t mind, give me a call on Monday to let me know how he’s settling in.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, struck suddenly by the fact that this is the second-to-last time he’ll ever be here, in subbasement 3. That Monday is just one short weekend away. “Yeah, of course.” 

* * *

_Knock knock knock_

_Knock_ pause _knock knock knock_

“Hey Barnes, happy almost-New Year! In just”– he looks at his watch– “under thirteen hours it’s gonna be 2015. Wow.”

Steve pulls his knees up to his chest. He doesn’t get cold anymore, not really, but sitting on the chilly marble floor was a lot more comfortable in September than it is now at the tail end of the year. “Even though I’ve been in the future for a while now, it still gets me every time I look at a calendar. I always expect it to say 1947 or something equally plausible, but nope. We’re in the 21st century, now, pal.”

He doesn’t have his sketchbook anymore, not since he gave it to Barnes, and he hasn’t bought a new one yet. He rummages around in his backpack for something that he can use to occupy his hands, and finds his pencil case with the kneaded eraser.

“Hey, I’m not going to come in tomorrow. I hope that’s okay with you. It’s just that I’m going to be at a charity thing that we do every year where we go to different hospitals and visit the kids that are sick. And then, afterwards, I’ve got to go home and get some more stuff ready for… for when you come home with me on Friday.”

All of a sudden it hits him like a stun baton to the stomach that things are really going to change in the next two days. _Holy shit_. He’d considered it before, of course, but abstractly. Even with all of his preparations, he hadn’t actually thought through the fact that he’s going to see Barnes face-to-face on Friday.

_I hadn’t actually pictured him_ _in my goddamn house_.

He feels a stab of nameless, formless anxiety, a little flutter of panic in his chest. _Okay. It’s okay. I want this. I want this more than anything._ That doesn’t make it any less scary, though.

With a start, he realizes that Barnes is moving around restlessly on the other side of the door, probably upset that his heart is beating a tattoo on the inside of his ribcage. “It’s okay, I’m okay,” he repeats out loud, like a mantra. “Just thinking, digging myself into a hole like usual.”

He takes a deep breath and squishes the kneaded eraser between his fingers, flattening it out into a pancake. Then he rolls the pancake up into a thin cylinder and the cylinder into a snail’s shell. Another deep breath and he feels mostly better.

“Sorry. Anyway. So, I won’t be here tomorrow. I’m sorry about that, but I figured that since it’s the very last day you’re going to be here, it’s the one day I can most easily skip. Because. Because we’re gonna see each other the day after tomorrow.”

_Deep breath. In, out._

“So, one thing that future people really love to do at this time of year is make New Year’s resolutions. I know it was something that people did when we were kids, but it seems like it’s way more popular nowadays. People make resolutions like go to the gym more, or be more environmentally responsible. Or sometimes silly things, like last year Clint resolved to come up with a drink order so ridiculous that the barista in the Starbucks in the Tower lobby refused to make it.”

He rolls the eraser between his palms into a perfect sphere, then squishes the sides to make it a cube. “The barista’s great, though, her name’s Sabrina, I think I told you about her a couple months ago. Anyway, she was up to the challenge and he finally had to give up halfway through the year.” He rolls the cube into a sphere again.

“Last year, I resolved to learn how to use the internet, ‘cause Tony was pestering me about it, except the joke was on him ‘cause I already knew how. For some reason, people think I’m kind of stupid because I missed seventy years of history. It’s like they expect me to actually be ninety-seven years old rather than thirty-one.”

He frowns, and makes a fist so that the eraser squishes out between his fingers. “I mean, I think I’m thirty-one. Sometimes I feel so tired that I must be a hundred and twenty, but sometimes I just feel like a sixteen-year-old boy in Brooklyn again. It feels weird to not know how old I am, not really.”

He rolls the eraser into a sphere again. “I guess you know all about that, though. I…”

He pauses, rolling the sphere gently between his fingers. “It means a lot to me to have someone with… with shared life experience. I said that to Nat once when she was trying to set me up on a date. I was just trying to get her off my back, but it really worked, ‘cause then she stopped pestering me to go on dates with girls she thought I’d like.”

“My friends are nice, they’re great, but… but they’re not. Hmm.” He swallows heavily; there seems to be a rock suddenly caught in his throat. “They’re not you, you know?”

He hears, from the other side of the door, a soft sound, like the barest sigh or a breath caught suddenly. _Oh shit. That was really intense._ “I mean, I mean…” he blurts out, trying to backtrack, wondering if he should. “You know what I mean,” he finishes, taking the easy way out.

“Anyway. So, I was thinking about my New Year’s resolution for this year, and I think I’m gonna resolve to take it easy. Or easier, as much as I can. I mean, since I woke up in the future, three years ago, I haven’t really done much but fight, fight, and fight some more. And it was good and right and necessary, but I think it’s time for me to get used to living here, now. Find out what I like, what I like to do. Be, you know, a real person again.”

An image comes suddenly to his mind: Barnes, a little fuzzy around the edges, sitting on his couch. Wrapped in one of his blankets, watching a movie on his laptop. Eating popcorn. “We can figure out how to be real people together, how about that?” He smiles to himself, leans his head up against the doorjamb, and spreads his palm on the dark wood for a moment.

“Well, I should go. I’ve still got to go back to Brooklyn and get a change of clothes and my uniform for tomorrow, and then I’ve got to come back here for the Avengers New Year’s Eve party. Thankfully, Tony’s in Malibu, so this year it’s just gonna be a handful of us sitting around the common area playing Mario Kart and trying to go easy on the mead.”

He stands up, keeping his palm flush with the door. He hears Barnes stand up on the other side. “Okay, the next time we talk it’s gonna be without this stupid door between us. I gotta say, though, I’ve grown a little fond of it, having leaned up against it every day for the last four months. I hope you have a good rest of the day and a good night’s sleep, Barnes. Remember, I won’t be coming tomorrow, but I’ll be here bright and early on Friday to pick you up. And take you home. Goodbye.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of **COURSE** Steve would have been obsessed with _Mr. Smith Goes to Washington_. Of course. It's the most Steve Rogers movie that doesn't actually feature Steve Rogers.
> 
> The chairs in front of Fury's desk are [Wassily chairs](https://www.knoll.com/product/wassily-chair). My college library had Wassily knockoffs scattered all over the place, and they were pretty comfortable once you sat down, but your knees really do end up level with your eyeballs and you have to be helped out of them by some kind passerby. It's the perfect fuck-off power play chair.


	5. January 2nd, 2015

Steve barely sleeps the night before he goes to pick up Barnes. He spends the morning of the 1st a little more than slightly hungover with Thor and Tony, handing out noisemakers and balloons to kids at Mt. Sinai. He would be miserable if he weren’t so keyed up about Barnes that his headache and queasiness and general decrepitude are lost in the cloud of anxiety that’s following him around like a swarm of bees. When a tiny blonde kid in an Iron Man helmet pops her balloon with a colored pencil and the bang almost makes him take out an IV stand, Thor claps him on the shoulder and booms, “FRIEND STEVEN, MIGHT I SUGGEST YOU TAKE A BREAK?” Steve protests weakly, but Tony takes him by the shoulders and shoves him in the direction of the door. “Don’t sweat it, Capitano, I called Clint to come take over for you half an hour ago, he should be here any minute.” As he’s slipping out the door, feeling guilty but relieved, he hears Tony mutter, “Shoulda brought him from the start... grew up in the circus... right at home.”

He goes back to the Tower and exhausts himself at the gym, and then thinks about staying the night so that he can be at SHIELD first thing in the morning. But the swarm of bees wins out and he goes back to Brooklyn to triple- and quadruple-check that everything is ready for Barnes the next day. He takes inventory of his refrigerator, checking to make sure there's eggs and milk, spinach and parmesan, ground beef and sliced turkey breast and an extra jar of mustard. He opens the door to the pantry under the stairs and starts to tally up the cans of tomatoes and beans and the jars of oatmeal and almonds and peanut butter using the back of a receipt and a golf pencil from Ikea before he realizes what he's doing. He drops the pencil where he stands and pulls his phone out of his back pocket.

"Hey Steve, what's up?"

"Nat, I'm freaking out."

He can hear her laugh down the line at him, derision and fondness in equal measures. "I wouldn't expect any less of you."

"Dr. Castaño is on vacation. You're the only one I could call."

"Yes," she says seriously, "I'm known for my therapeutic personality."

Steve is pacing in a circle around his house, from the kitchen into the entryway, through the arch into the living room, behind the couch, past the dining table, and into the kitchen again. On one pass through the dining room he trips over a chair and then, once it's righted, throws himself into it with a thump and a gusty sigh.

"What do I do, Nat?"

She's silent in his ear for a moment, and then she says, "First, you get something to eat. You didn't have any lunch, did you?"

"Uhhhh," he says, unwilling to confirm or deny.

"Right. And then, after you eat, you pick some mindless TV and sit your ass down on the couch and don't get up again until it's time to go to bed."

The idea of sitting down today, of all days, and doing nothing makes Steve's anxiety go into overdrive. "But I still have so much to do!"

"You called me, Steve. Take my advice or don't. But if you can think of one thing that you haven't done yet, I will personally do all your paperwork for the next mission."

Steve thinks. Three minutes later, he says, "Okay. Fine. You're right. I'm going to go make a couple turkey sandwiches and sit on the couch and not get up until it's time for bed."

"Make it five or six sandwiches, Steve. And listen, do you trust me?

"Of course," he says, without even thinking about it.

"Then trust me now when I say that everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay."

* * *

He stays up way too late watching Star Trek reruns, then lays in bed for a long while, playing and replaying worst-case scenarios in his head. The responsibility of taking custody of Barnes is almost overwhelming, and not just his responsibility to SHIELD or to Fury. What happens if he can’t keep Barnes safe? There are remnants of Hydra still out there, just waiting, Steve’s anxiety informs him, to snatch Barnes right out from under his nose.

And what if he doesn’t get better, or just stays the same, closed off, uncommunicative? And if he gets worse? Or what if he runs away? What if he runs away because he doesn’t want to be with Steve? What if Steve, with his recklessness and the Grand Canyon of his overwrought emotions visible from space, just isn’t good for him? What if, what if, what if?

Finally, he recognizes that he’s in another spiral and turns on his bedside light. It's too late to call Natasha again, so he picks up the book he was reading and stares at his own hands turning the pages for another hour until he’s tired enough to actually fall asleep when he closes his eyes.

He still wakes up too early, but at least it’s not too early for an extra-long run.

When he gets back, he takes a piping-hot shower and shaves carefully, forcing himself to pay attention to the things of the moment: his pruney fingers pulling the skin of his cheek taut, the scrape of the razor over a day’s worth of stubble, the bracing shock of the cold water he uses to rinse off the last of the lather. He does the same thing with his breakfast, cataloging each moment to keep his mind tethered to the ground and not shooting toward the troposphere like a weather balloon gone rogue.

Finally, after as much mindfulness as he can possibly take without risking a nosebleed, he allows himself to check the time on his phone. It’s almost half-past seven, and he breathes a sigh of relief and jumps to his feet, his body overjoyed at finally being allowed to expend as much energy as it wants to. It’s late enough that he can get ready and leave and he won’t get to SHIELD before Dr. Zaidi does.

Since he’s planning to take a car back to Brooklyn, he takes the subway into the city, bouncing his foot on the floor at such a frequency that the lady sitting across from him gives him a death glare over the top of her newspaper. He manages not to sprint down the sidewalk, but can’t help bounding through the revolving door like Bugs Bunny, which earns him another glare from the guy on security duty. He takes the elevator to subbasement 3, and when the doors slide open with a soft _ding_ at exactly five minutes to nine, Dr. Zaidi is standing there waiting, holding a stack of manila file folders and the cloth-bound black notebook. When she sees him vibrating on the balls of his feet, she cracks an enormous grin. “Captain Rogers, good morning. I was just about to head upstairs, but I’m glad I’m able to see you for a moment first.”

Steve gives her a silly little wave and steps out of the elevator. He holds the door and gestures inside, but she shakes her head and says, “I’ve got that meeting with Fury, but he can wait a minute or two.” Steve returns her grin, and then scratches the back of his head, feeling unbearably awkward and lost.

“So, uh, what do I need to do now?” he asks with a helpless little shrug. “I can't believe that I don't need to sign something or you don't need to do anything. I imagined that at least, maybe, you’d. Um. Be there.” He almost whispers the last part, as if Dr. Zaidi won’t be able to judge him if she can barely hear him.

But, of course, she gives him that familiar knowing, compassionate smile. “There’s nothing to do, Captain Rogers. Everything’s ready, the paperwork is filed. He had already packed up what few things he has when I came in this morning, and I left him waiting for you in my office not two minutes ago. There’s nothing more to do but just walk on down and take him home, and I don’t believe you need my help for that. It’s not like I need to introduce you.”

She’s looking at him kindly, patiently, but he still feels like she’s Anubis weighing his heart against a feather. He’s not afraid that she will find him wanting, not after the last four months, but he can’t help but feel nervous anyway as he meets her eyes behind her deceptively conventional wire-frame glasses. His heart is beating twice as fast as normal. He’s sure she can hear it, she has to be able to hear it, it sounds like the _rat-a-tat_ of a machine gun in his ears. “Yeah,” he says finally. “Yeah, you’re right. Me and Barnes go way back.”

Dr. Zaidi laughs softly, the apples of her cheeks pushing the skin around her eyes into crinkles. “Well, Captain Rogers, it was lovely getting to know you. I won’t be seeing you as often, but I’m sure this won’t be the last time. Call me on Monday, if you will, and let me know how he’s settling in. And apart from that, please do not ever hesitate to call if you need anything else, even the smallest question, it doesn’t matter. And even if you have no questions, please, keep in touch.”

She presses the elevator call button, then shuffles the file folders into the crook of her left arm and holds out her right hand. Steve takes it in both of his and tries to press the immense weight of his gratitude into her palm. “Of course. And thank you for everything you’ve done for him. And for me. So much. I could never tell you how grateful I am.”

When the elevator chimes softly, she gives his hand one last squeeze, stepping into the cabin and turning around to face him. “Go on, then. Go get him,” she says as the doors close between them.

Steve walks down the hall to Dr. Zaidi’s office door, acutely aware of the soft scuff of his sneakers on the marble floor. The door is cracked, and he stands outside for a moment, breathing deep, before he pushes it open softly with his fingertips. For a long moment, he thinks that the office is empty, that Barnes is not there. He stands, frozen, mind full of white noise, all of the last night’s worst-case scenarios coming back in a flash. _Not again_ , he thinks _. I can’t lose him again_.

He allows himself two seconds of blind panic, and then clamps down on his emotions like a bear trap. _Okay. Greatest tactical mind of the century. What do I do now?_ Barnes wouldn’t have been allowed to leave SHIELD without Steve, he knows that’s part of the custody agreement. But unless he’s gotten impossibly soft in his four months as the agency’s guest, Steve knows he’s capable of getting away without leaving a trace, whether he’s allowed to or not.

Barely half a minute has passed, though it seems more like half an hour, and he’s starting to let the panic and crushing despair creep into his chest again when he hears a rustling and realizes that Barnes is sitting in the leather chair, hidden by its high back. Barnes pushes himself to his feet and turns around, and then he’s there.

“Steve.”

Steve clears his throat, but it doesn’t help him find his voice. Barnes steps around the chair so that he’s facing Steve, which puts him almost within arm’s reach in the small office. He’s holding a black duffle bag, and Steve gets a good look at him for the first time since he beat Steve’s face to a pulp on the helicarrier.

He looks good. He looks great. Amazing, even. He’s lean, noticeably leaner than he was eight months ago, but he doesn’t look thin or sickly. Even under the baggy, grey SHIELD-issue hoodie and sweatpants, it’s obvious that he’s been going to the gym, and he still looks powerful enough to match Steve in combat. His sleeves are pushed up to his elbows, and his human forearm is laid with muscle like a bundle of rebar, tapering down to a slim but well-built wrist and that hand with the long pianist’s fingers that Steve remembers so well. The metal hand is crossed over top of it, and now that he can see it at rest, it strikes him as a perfect match, the detailing around the knuckles like the lead inlaid in a stained-glass window. _Stop looking at his hands, you’re gonna start blushing_ , he thinks, and immediately feels the heat start to creep up his neck.

He quickly looks up at Barnes’s face and sees that Barnes isn’t looking at him. Rather, he’s staring over Steve’s left shoulder, eyes fixed on some point out in the hallway beyond the open door. _Thank god_ , Steve thinks, because he’s sure that his face is doing something extremely complicated and embarrassing, and he doesn’t think he could look Barnes in the eye without laughing hysterically or bursting into tears.

He clears his throat again, and this time his voice comes out of hiding. “Hi.” He has to clear his throat for a third time before he can continue; it seems to be full of something like cotton bolls, both soft enough to choke on and prickly enough to scratch. “Ready to go home?”

Barnes’s eyes flick from Steve’s ear to his mouth, and then the floor. He tenses a little, a subtle shift in the way he holds himself that Steve almost misses, but then he shoulders his bag and nods.

Steve floats out the door of Dr. Zaidi’s office and down the hall toward the elevator, Barnes following him like the south end of a magnet follows the north. The elevator is already waiting for them; Dr. Zaidi must have sent it back down. He pushes the call button and the doors slide open with a soft _sssh-click_ , and he steps to the side, gesturing with his hand, “Barnes.”

Barnes slips by him into the little box and stands with his back to the right-hand corner. Steve follows him in and is just pressing the button for the ground floor when he hears Barnes cough beside him. “Bucky,” he says quietly.

Steve digs his thumbnail into the crease where his pinky meets his palm, hoping desperately that a little pain will help him keep it under control, and throws out a smile like a foundering boat throws out an anchor. If it’s a little bit unhinged, well, it passes unnoticed because Barnes is staring fixedly at the seam where the elevator doors part. “Bucky,” Steve manages to say. “It’s great to see you.”

Bucky shifts his weight from foot to foot as the elevator chimes softly to announce their arrival. As the doors open onto the bustling, sunlit atrium at the front of SHIELD headquarters and the big revolving doors that are waiting to sweep them out into the noise and humanity of West 47th Street, he looks Steve in the eye, just a quarter of a second that feels like a glancing blow, and whispers, “Yeah, you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the one hand, I'm sorry to end it there! On the other hand, I'm absolutely not :)
> 
> If you liked this fic and desperately want to see what happens when Steve and Bucky spend more than 30 seconds in the same room together, you should subscribe to the series because the sequel is 98% finished and will start posting as soon as I get it done (optimistically, 1-2 months).

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Hark_Bananas) and [Tumblr](https://harkbananas.tumblr.com/).


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